The unprecedented lawfare campaign launched by Team Biden and its Democrat allies in New York has former President and leading Republican 2024 candidate Donald Trump on the verge of needing to sell off some of his real estate holdings to raise cash to live on.
Judge Art Engoron ordered Trump to pay a $355 million fine and barred the former president from doing business in New York State for three years. Once interest is added, the total fine will rise to $450 million. That is on top of an $83.3 million fine Trump was ordered to pay for allegedly defaming E. Jean Carroll.
“Nothing like this has ever happened in our country before. It is strictly third world, Russia, China at their worst,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “But fear not, we will win big on November 5th, and Make America Great Again!!!”
Trump added: “We can’t allow Crooked or Compromised Judges and Prosecutors to get away with what they are doing to your favorite President, ME, in New York City and State, Fulton County (Atlanta), Georgia, or Washington, D.C. It is a coordinated attack on FREEDOM & LIBERTY. These cases should all be thrown out!”
The legal community, outside of those fully engaged in the lawfare campaign and their Democrat regime media allies, has responded with outrage.
New York Attorney General Letitia James and Engoron "have essentially turned a vaguely worded New York State law into a modern day Bill of Attainder targeted at Donald Trump both for political gain and because they despise his political views and desperately want to call his truthfulness into question as he runs for President of the United States in 2024," Steven Calabresi, the Clayton J. & Henry R. Barber Professor of Law at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, wrote in a Feb. 18 analysis for Reason.
"In doing this, they have violated Trump's First Amendment right to freedom of speech and of the press; his Fifth Amendment right not to be deprived of liberty or property without due process of law; his Fifth Amendment right not to have property taken away from him except for a pubic use with just compensation being paid; his Eighth Amendment right not to be made to pay an excessive fine; his Article IV, Section 2 right as a citizen of Florida to make and enforce contracts in New York on the same terms as are other New Yorkers; and his Fourteenth Amendment right to be free to pursue an occupation without unnecessary and burdensome regulation."
Calabresi added: "The civil fraud judgment against Donald Trump is a travesty and an unjust political act rivaled only in American politics by the killing of former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton by Vice President Aaron Burr. If the New York State appellate courts do not reverse this judgment, the U.S. Supreme Court MUST grant cert on this case and reverse Judge Engoron's outrageous decisions. National, presidential politics will be permanently altered if a local State's legal system can be used in this way against candidates for President of the United States. This case raises a national issue of profound importance and if the New York State appellate courts do not address it, the U.S. Supreme Court MUST!"
With Trump barred from running his company, Engoron appointed former U.S. District Court Judge Barbara Jones, a Clinton appointee, to manage the business.
In a report issued to Engoron before his ruling in the Trump Organization fraud case, Jones said that she had determined the company had multiple “disclosure deficiencies,” in which financial reports were “either incomplete or demonstrated a lack of transparency.”
Trump’s lawyers challenged the findings and said Jones had engaged in a “Javert-like quest against the defendants” — a reference to the relentless prosecutor from the novel and musical “Les Miserables” — and was interested only in continuing her role as monitor, for which Bracewell had already collected $2.6 million in fees.
Calabresi noted: "The bottom line is that a never before used New York State penalty has been twisted into a tool for a grossly excessive fine and more seriously the completely inappropriate appointment of Judge Jones as an 'independent monitor' who can micromanage the Trump business, which she is not competent to do, and to even order the dissolution of the Trump Business in New York State. This outcome was pursued by Letitia James, a politically ambitious Democrat, who is the Attorney General of New York State, and who hopes to win a future Democratic primary for Governor of or Senator from New York State."
The civil judgments could be just the start of Trump‘s legal headaches this year.
Jury selection is set to begin March 25 in a New York criminal trial that accuses Trump of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments before the 2016 election. It is one of four criminal trials Trump faces, though legal delays could push the other trials deeper into the year or past the November election.
Meanwhile, Trump has the support of one of Europe's true conservative leaders, Hungarian President Viktor Orban.
Hungary has no intention of interfering in the 2024 U.S. presidential election, but Orban is quite clear on who he is pulling for.
"It time for another Make America Great Again," Orban tells an appreciative crowd in a video posted to X on Monday.
Viktor Orban endorses Trump.
This is awesome.pic.twitter.com/fHUQmnYODA — Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) February 19, 2024
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