![]() But you can't just say, 'I don't have anything. The judge agreed, telling the parties during a hearing, of Trump, "He can't produce what he doesn't have. Trump's intransigence and subterfuge," James said in demanding Trump be fined $10,000 a day until he turns over all Trump Organization business documents in his personal custody, or else explain why he's empty-handed. Still missing, though, the attorney general has alleged, were additional files from the paperwork trove they believed Trump stored in two dozen metal file cabinets on the 26th floor of Trump Tower in Manhattan. The Trump Organization itself turned over 900,000 documents to the attorney general's probe - some 6 million pages. Those few documents included such non-evidentiary curios as a photo of a grocery store, and several old news clippings about golf stars from the 1960s and 1970s. The appeal centers one of those fights, over James' contention that despite running an international real-estate and golf-resort business for decades, Trump only ever turned over 10 personal business documents to her investigation. The sweeping case seeks to permanently ban the Trumps from doing business in New York and is scheduled for trial in October.Įngoron has refereed fights between the attorney general and Trump's lawyers since the summer of 2020, when the AG first sought help getting the former president to comply with her investigatory subpoenas in the lead-up to the fraud lawsuit. ![]() The contempt-of-court order now under the panel's review had been issued back in April, by New York State Supreme Court Arthur Engoron, who, like the appellate panel, sits in Manhattan.Įngoron, "chose to blindly 'rubber stamp' the exact amount of daily sanctions requested" by the attorney general, Habba complains in her most recent filing in the appeal, a 237-page brief from December.Įngoron is the same judge who in November imposed an independent monitor over the Trump Organization, in response to what he called Trump and his company's "demonstrated propensity to engage in persistent fraud." Trump "Truthed" in response that Engoron is a "Radical Left Lunatic Judge in New York City."Įngoron is also the same judge presiding over the attorney general's fraud lawsuit, which accuses Trump, his company, and his three eldest children of a decade-long pattern of lying about the worth of company assets in financial documents. Appeals typically take four to six weeks to decide. Trump's Contumacious Conduct Was Calculated to Impede OAG's Fraud Investigation." "OAG" is short for Office of the Attorney General.Ī state appellate panel of five judges began weighing Trump's contempt-order appeal Wednesday, as first reported by Bloomberg. The response included a section of argument titled, "Mr. Trump has repeatedly called James "racist" and, perplexingly, "Letitia 'Peekaboo' James."Ī lawyer for the attorney general's office, meanwhile, kept his response to Trump's appeal down to an also fervent, but far trimmer, 66 pages. Much of that animosity has played out in public. "I think this is being driven by animosity, pure and simple," said Snell, who now runs MainStreet.law, a firm focused on helping small and medium-sized businesses. "I don't think they're being strategic," said Tristan Snell, the lead prosecutor on the New York attorney general's investigation into Trump University, which settled for $25 million in 2016. The fine was "vindictive," "speculative," "improper," "punitive," "excessive," and based on "threadbare justification," attorney Alina Habba argues over the course of a 233-page Notice of Motion, a 247-page Record on Appeal, and a pair of briefs totaling 497 pages. He wants it back so badly that his lawyers have filed a total of 977 pages of appellate paperwork seeking its return and the expungement of the original contempt order. Trump, by Forbes' reckoning, is worth $3.2 billion. But he's sparing no effort to get his $110,000 penalty check back. ![]() The money, which sits frozen, for now, in an attorney general escrow account, is Trump's contempt-of-court penalty for flouting James' subpoenas last year, as she readied her massive September fraud lawsuit against the Trump Organization. The big fight over a small sum is an odd side-show to NY's $250 million lawsuit against Trump Org.įormer President Donald Trump and New York Attorney General Letitia James are fighting a big, wordy war over a relatively small prize: a $110,000 check he sent her office in May. The check is Trump's fine for flouting subpoenas he's filed 1,000 pages in briefs to get it back. Trump and NY's attorney general are in a wordy war over his $110K contempt-of-court check from May. Former President Donald Trump is fighting to take back a $110,000 contempt-of-court check he cut last May to the New York attorney general's office the check is his fine for failing to fully comply last year with AG Letitia James' subpoenas for his business documents.
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