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On the docket: follow the money
The $83.3m in damages that Donald Trump was ordered to pay for defaming E Jean Carroll may soon seem like chump change. In the New York civil business fraud trial, where a verdict is expected any day, the penalty could reach hundreds of millions of dollars, drain the former president’s liquid assets, and hamper him from making more money by dismantling his businesses.
“The documents here clearly contain fraudulent valuations that defendants used in business,” Judge Arthur Engoron wrote back in September, ruling that the Trump Organization, Trump and his sons Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump, who are also executives, committed fraud by lying for years about the value of various assets of their company to inflate its value and get better terms on bank loans and insurance. The only question now is what Engoron will assess as punishment.
The New York attorney general, Letitia James, who prosecuted the case, has asked for $370m in penalties as well as barring Trump from ever running a company that does business in New York state again and preventing him from buying real estate or taking out a loan in the state for the next five years.
A verdict is expected any day. During a hearing in November, the judge said he was aiming to issue a decision by the end of January, though he did not set himself a firm deadline.
Whatever he decides on, the financial penalty will probably be steep, even for someone like Trump, who Forbes estimates is worth about $2.6bn and has roughly $426m in liquid assets.
If Trump is barred from doing business in New York state – or, in one of the most extreme and least likely punishments Engoron could hand down, his companies are liquidated – that could potentially force the sale of some of the iconic New York properties he built his business reputation on, like the Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan which contains its three-floor penthouse that was his longtime home before he switched residency to Florida in 2019.
New York’s anti-fraud statute leaves Engoron “an awful lot of wiggle room” in his decision, perhaps an uncomfortable amount, Columbia University law professor Eric Talley said. “There’s just not a big track record for companies of this size that are at this stage for this kind of proceeding involving this particular statute,” he said.
Talley suspects Engoron is aiming for a “Goldilocks-ian sweet spot between having a completely toothless and limp order that basically does nothing” and what would amount to a “corporate death penalty”.
Briefs
● Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor on Trump’s Georgia Rico trial, settled his divorce case on Tuesday. After allegations that he and the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, are in a romantic relationship, records obtained in the divorce proceedings showed that he had twice purchased airline tickets for himself and Willis. The settlement means that neither has to testify under oath, in a hearing that was scheduled for Wednesday, after being subpoenaed by Wade’s estranged wife.
But this isn’t over. Michael Roman, a former Trump campaign official and one of the former president’s codefendants, is seeking to have both Wade and Willis removed from the case and the entire district attorney’s office disqualified, with the claim that their alleged relationship is a conflict of interest. Trump filed his own motion last Thursday to do the same. Both Willis and Wade have received subpoenas to appear in court on 15 February for a hearing on the motion.
● On Monday, Georgia state lawmakers passed a bill that would create a panel with the power to remove elected prosecutors from office, potentially giving them a way to boot Willis from office and end her prosecution of Trump.
● In the Florida national security documents criminal case, Judge Aileen Cannon was set to meet in closed chambers with special counsel Jack Smith and prosecutors on Wednesday in order to, as Cannon’s order put it, “assist with the court’s evaluation” of Trump’s requests for access to the classified materials. The order also specified that Trump’s lawyers not be present and that the meeting takes place in a “facility suitable for the discussion of classified information”.
● Illinois became the latest state basically pleading for the US supreme court to make a decision on whether the 14th amendment requires removing Trump from the presidential ballot for violating the US constitution by committing insurrection. The state board of elections decided unanimously on Tuesday that it didn’t have the power to decide the issue, setting up further legal battles. State officials in Colorado and Maine have ruled that he should be removed, while multiple other states have ruled the opposite.
Cronies and casualties
Former Trump campaign attorney (and Georgia plea-bargainer) Sidney Powell allegedly received a spreadsheet claiming to contain private passwords of employees for the voting technology company Smartmatic from Marshall Herring, president of the far-right TV network One America News, according to new legal filings from Smartmatic’s lawyers obtained by CNN. Smartmatic is suing OAN for defamation, and in legal filings, says the evidence suggests OAN executives “may have engaged in criminal activities” because they “appear to have violated state and federal laws regarding data privacy”.
Peter Navarro, a close Trump ally and former administration official, was sentenced to four months in prison last Thursday. He had been found guilty of criminal contempt of Congress last fall for ignoring a subpoena from the House January 6 committee.
What’s next
Any day We’re expecting the verdict on the punishment in the New York business fraud case imminently.
Friday That’s the deadline for Willis to respond in writing to a motion arguing she should be removed from the Georgia case because of an alleged romantic relationship with another prosecutor.
8 February The US supreme court has set oral arguments on whether the 14th amendment of the US constitution bans Trump from running for federal office. The clause disqualifies former officials who previously took an oath to uphold the constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the US. At issue is a Colorado state election officials ruling that the amendment applies to Trump and would remove him from the presidential ballot in that state.
12 and 13 February Hearings on motions on how to protect the classified information at the heart of the Florida documents case.
15 February Fulton county Judge Scott McAfee has scheduled a hearing on the motion to disqualify Willis and Wade from the Georgia prosecution.
Calendar crunch
Court gazers have begun wondering what’s holding up the DC circuit court of appeals from making a ruling on Trump’s claim that presidents are immune from criminal prosecution, which has put the brakes on special counsel Jack Smith’s election interference case. It’s been more than seven weeks since Judge Tanya Chutkan paused the countdown to a 4 March trial date so appellate judges could rule.
The three-judge panel hearing the appeal seemed skeptical of Trump’s claims when they heard arguments back on 8 January, and were expected to rule quickly. But three weeks later, they have yet to issue a decision.
There is no time limit for judges, and it would only take one judge on the panel to delay things. Two of the judges were appointed by President Joe Biden, and one, Judge Karen Henderson, was appointed by George HW Bush. Henderson opposed expediting the case on a previous motion, though during oral arguments, she expressed skepticism of Trump’s view.
“I think it is paradoxical to say that his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed allows him to violate criminal law,” she said from the bench.
The panel’s decision is only the first step for Trump’s presidential immunity gambit. Whoever the appeals panel rules against can (and most likely will) appeal to a hearing by the entire circuit court and then to – where this matter will almost undoubtedly eventually land – the US supreme court.
All the while, the entire election interference trial timeline is on pause, and the longer this drags on, the less likely a trial will happen before the 2024 election – or at all.
