Having Lost Fraud Case Bigly, Donald Trump Decides Now Is Time To Negotiate A Settlement
Having Lost Fraud Case Bigly, Donald Trump Decides Now Is Time To Negotiate A Settlement
Buddy, you're supposed to do that before they fine your ass half a billion dollars.
Let’s say you get sued for business fraud. You hire super-terrible lawyers, you go to trial, you antagonize the judge every chance you get, and then he hits you with a $354 million fine, plus another $90-plus million in interest. And you have 30 days to pay up.
You are pretty clearly, to put it in legal terms, galactically fucked.
That is the plotline for the current run of episodes of Law & Order: Civil Judgements Against Citrus Fruit-Colored Fuckwits.
To recap: In last week’s episode, a New York City judge slapped a $354 million fine plus $90-something million in interest on real estate developer and ambulatory tub of cholesterol Donald Trump after finding that Trump had committed massive fraud to secure bank loans and lower his tax bills for several decades.
Because to the winner go the spoils, the office of Attorney General Letitia James this week filed a proposed judgement that would satisfy the conditions of the Decision and Order handed down by Judge Arthur Engoron. The judgement would then be signed by the court clerk and “entered,” at which point the parties can start the process of seeing that it gets enforced.
As we understand it as not-lawyers, this is a basic step in the settling of just about any civil penalty. Once the signed judgement is officially filed, Trump has 30 days to come up with $450 million in cash to either pay the judgement or put into a court escrow account for the duration of the appeals process. Otherwise the AG can start seizing his assets: his buildings, his golf courses, his thousands of pounds of hairspray and bronzer, whatever.
Donald Trump, however, decided this week to try and negotiate the unnegotiable, because as a businessman he assumes there’s always room for negotiation until you sign on the dotted line. (He also thinks there is room to change the terms by fiat after you sign on the dotted line, but that’s a whole other story.) Negotiation isn’t really how any of this works, at least not at this stage. The time to negotiate was many, many, many months ago, when maybe he could have negotiated a settlement.
To get the non-negotiation going, Trump’s new lawyer, Cliff Robert, decided to pretend that the AG filing a judgement after a directed verdict is some sort of unprecedented legal maneuver that she just made up because she is always very mean and nasty to Mr. Trump:
Notwithstanding, the Attorney General has taken it upon herself to submit a proposed judgement to the Clerk of the Court without notice to the defendants and without conferring with Defendants’ counsel, clearly hoping that the Clerk will issue the proposed judgement before defendants even have a chance to review it, let alone submit a proposed counter-judgement. (All bolding in the original.)
Robert somehow managed to not add a huffy “Well I never!” You barely have to read between the lines for that.
Defendants therefore request that the Court set a return date for the Proposed Judgement that affords Defendants sufficient time to submit a proposed counter-judgement.
Like we said, not how any of this works. And clearly a stalling tactic by a defendant who a) is infamous for them, and b) despite how much he brags about his multi-billion-dollar fortune, does not have anywhere near $450 million in cash.
Engoron wrote back nearly immediately:
I have compared the language of the Attorney General’s proposed judgment to the language of my February 16, 2024 Decision and Order, and the former exactly tracks the latter. […]
Please let me know, by 5 P.M. today [Wednesday], if you object in any specific ways, and how your counter-judgment would differ.
Then there was some back and forth about a couple of minor errors regarding the defendants’ addresses, during which Robert asked Engoron to stay enforcement of the judgement for 30 days. He also accused James of being in an “unseemly rush” that violates “all accepted practice in New York state courts.”
Engoron responded on Thursday morning:
You have again asked for time to file a proposed counter-judgment again without explaining in any way the Attorney General’s proposed judgment is incorrect […] and again without specifying how your proposed judgment would differ. The proposed judgment accurately reflects the spirit and letter of the February 16 Decision and Order.
Robert responded by complaining that the judge still had not addressed his request for a temporary stay of the judgement’s enforcement “to protect defendants’ appellate rights and ensure an orderly post-judgment process.”
But of course Engoron had addressed the request, by telling Robert he needed more details, which Robert refused to provide. It took Engoron less than ten minutes to respond to this last round of crap:
You have failed to explain, much less justify, any basis for a stay.
I am confident that the Appellate Division will protect your appellate rights.
That two-sentence response? As best we can tell, that is judge-ese for “We’re done here, now kindly fuck all the way off.”
As we mentioned earlier, even if Trump appeals, he still has to come up with the $450 million in 30 days. That money then gets held in escrow by the court for the duration of the appeals process.
Or Trump needs to come up with $450 million within 30 days and then cut the check to whatever entity in the New York court system one cuts checks for civil judgments, or Trump Tower gets renamed The Letitia James Center for Kicking Donald Trump Hard in the Nuts.
Or whatever she wants to rename it. We’re open to other suggestions.
It is very, very clear that this whole dust-up was a desperate effort by Trump and his lawyers to delay for a few weeks while giving themselves an excuse to try to get the case in front of an appeals court without Trump having to take the legally required step of scrounging up the $450 million. It is also very, very clear that Judge Engoron is not falling for it.
Do not be surprised if by the time you read this, Trump has gone to an appeals court to demand a stay of enforcement of the judgement until he presents a counter-offer. In a normal world, any appeals court would also tell him to fuck all the way off, but this is Trump, so who knows. We are out of the predictions business when it comes to him.
On the plus side for Trump, the weirdos who started a GoFundMe a week ago to pay the judgement have come up with just over a $1 million as of Friday morning. At that rate, they only need another 449 weeks to cover the whole tab.
Boo fucking hoo, Donald. Clock’s ticking.
[CNN]
Please subscribe if you can. Yr Wonkette will also accept $450 million cash.
As an ex-lawyer — in NY — Donnie could get away with posting a bond for 10% of the final judgment so he can appeal it. Even his ability to get that 10% is questionable. Related: he may have difficulty doing same for the much smaller Carroll judgments.
This situation may account for at least part of the reason he looks like shit and has trouble pronouncing words.
I should add that if he’s returned to office, his means of vengeance against NY for this is extremely limited.
the real world - how does it even work again?