Lawfare is a political weapon disguised as a legal one. It is destined to fail when the scrutiny of the law eventually catches up to it.
That happened Thursday when the New York appellate court tossed out the roughly $500 million civil judgment - including interest - against President Donald Trump in a politically driven case brought by state Attorney General Letitia James.
The penalty was outrageous and wholly disconnected from the alleged wrong. It was an excessive monetary punishment that violated the Eighth Amendment, the five jurists on the panel said. Kudos to them for grasping the obvious.
NY APPEALS COURT TOSSES $500M PENALTY AGAINST TRUMP IN LETITIA JAMES CIVIL CASE
Regrettably, they left in place the trial court's injunctive relief orders on remedial actions against the Trump Organization, which will now be the subject of additional litigation and an appeal to New York's highest court.
But the case should never have been filed to begin with. It was the definition of lawfare. Together with the four criminal indictments against Trump, the collective goal was to bankrupt the former president, jail him and stop him from seeking re-election in 2024.
The lawfare campaign was so blatant that it boomeranged against his Democratic adversaries. Voters saw Trump not as a villain but as a victim of unscrupulous opponents. It helped propel him to a second term last November.
James campaigned on the unethical promise to "get Trump." At the time, she had no access to evidence or any knowledge of wrongdoing. But once in office, she scoured every nook and cranny to conjure up a specious case by mangling a consumer protection statute - even though no consumers were harmed.
The gravamen of her accusations was that Trump inflated the value of his assets to obtain real estate loans. Except he didn't. He hired outside property experts, respected accountants and some of the top lawyers in New York to perform the valuations. At trial, they vouched for the accuracy of their work. They complied fully with generally accepted accounting principles.
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The banks that loaned the money did their own due diligence by retaining other professionals who conducted separate and exhaustive valuations. They all agreed with the Trump estimates as qualified, loaned him the cash and netted hundreds of millions of dollars in profits. Finance executives testified that they wanted to lend him even more money.
So, who was harmed here? No one. There was no concrete injury. In a case alleging fraud, the supposed victims insisted they were never defrauded.
In a civil fraud case, the law requires proof of intent to deceive - that someone knowingly made false statements. That has been the established standard in common law for more than a century.
But to circumvent that fatal weakness, James commandeered a poorly conceived and rarely invoked law, Executive Law 63(12), to pursue her unprecedented action against Trump. She sought to punish him for making allegedly inaccurate statements with no intent to do so.
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It's like prosecuting a customer for robbing a bank after mistakenly accepting too much cash from a teller. It also violates the Constitution by penalizing inaccurate speech protected by the First Amendment.
Trump's chances of prevailing in the remnants of the case are good. If his liability is allowed to stand, any business in New York can be taken away if the owners misstate - without negligence or intent - assets to secure loans.
It also ignores the typical disparity in real estate values. They are inherently subjective and tied to dynamic marketplace conditions. Fluctuation is the fundamental nature of property pricing. Ask three professionals for their opinion and you'll get three different answers.
Ask a judge unschooled in the matter and you're likely to get an absurd opinion.
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The trial judge, Arthur Engoron, declared that Trump's Palm Beach estate was worth a minimum of $18 million. "Accordingly, there can be no mistake that Donald Trump's valuation of Mar-a-Lago from 2011-2021 was fraudulent," he wrote in an order issued Feb. 16, 2024.
Here's a news alert for Engoron: $18 million in the toniest section of Palm Beach will get you a porta-potty on a spit of dirt. That's all. Apparently, his honor doesn't understand the difference between an appraised value and a market value.
This year, a vacant lot near Mar-a-Lago hit the market at $200 million. Given the prominence and history of Trump's unique luxury property, some Florida real estate experts think it could fetch upward of $500 million. Probably a whole lot more.
With Engoron on the bench, Trump never had a chance at a fair trial. The judge endorsed a brazen misuse of the law and deprived him of legitimate defenses. The expired statute of limitations was shrugged off.
By erasing the ludicrous $500 million judgment, the appellate court belatedly recognized the gross miscarriage of justice. Although part of the case remains, Justice David Friedman argued it should be dismissed entirely. He castigated James for persecuting Trump to derail his political career and destroy his business.
The ruling vindicates what voters already knew: Lawfare is a corruption of the legal system and, when wielded to unduly influence a presidential election, an assault on the principles of democracy.
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