Sept. 26 (UPI) — A panel of New York appellate court justices grilled both the New York attorney general and a lawyer for Donald Trump Thursday during a hearing seeking to overturn a $452 million civil court verdict against the former president.
A five-judge panel for the Appellate Division of New York’s First Judicial Department — the state’s second-highest court — peppered New York Deputy Solicitor General Judith Vale and Trump attorney Dean John Sauer with pointed queries during the hearing in a New York City courtroom, leaving the impression they may be willing to overturn or a least limit the massive financial penalty handed to Trump and his company in February.
Trump, himself, was not present at the hearing.
The 2024 Republican presidential nominee is appealing a ruling by New York State Judge Arthur Engoron who agreed with New York Attorney General Letitia James that he pay hundred of millions of dollars in damages for civil fraud and be barred from conducting real estate business in New York for three years.
James in 2022 accused Trump of defrauding banks and investors by inflating his net worth by as much $2.2 billion. He was convicted in September 2023.
During Thursday’s hearing, Sauer repeated many of the arguments made by Trump during the fraud trial, saying the penalty should be thrown out because “no one was harmed” by his client’s claims of inflated net worth and that James exceeded her authority by “pretending that there’s no statute of limitations at all” in reaching her damages estimates, CBS News reported.
Some justices, however, hit him with questions about whether Trump is attempting to weaken the authority of the state to prosecute egregious and repeated instances of fraud.
Meanwhile, Vale defended the massive amount of the fine, saying the level of illegality committed by Trump and his company, The Trump Organization, was exceptional.
“Although this is a large number, it’s a large number for a couple reasons. One, because there was a lot of fraud and illegality,” she said, according to CNN. “That is an enormous benefit they got from this conduct” of falsifying financial data as a means of obtaining favorable bank rates.
At least some of the appellate court justices appeared willing to question the fairness of the penalty.
“There has to be some limitation on what the attorney general can do,” Justice Peter Moulton told Vale.
“How do we draw a line or put up some guardrails to know when the attorney general is operating within her broad sphere … or going into an area where she doesn’t have jurisdiction?” asked Associate Justice John Higgitt.
