Democrats thought that their lawfare against Donald Trump was going to be their saving grace for the 2024 election.
But prosecutors are quickly learning that staking their reputations on political persecution is not sustainable for their careers.
And Letitia James just stomped out of court fuming in anger after judges picked apart her case.
Half billion civil fraud judgment against Trump is falling apart
New York Attorney General Letitia James built her campaign for her position on the promise that she would focus solely on going after Donald Trump.
And James did follow through on that promise when she teamed up with fellow Democrat, Judge Arthur Engoron, to bill Trump $464 million in a civil fraud case where no crime, financial loss, or victim was identified.
Legal experts across the country, from a wide variety of political standpoints, saw the lawsuit as being nothing more than a politically motivated abuse of power.
No Attorney General has invoked such a law to target someone in the way that James had done with former President Donald Trump.
In her case, James alleged that Trump had defrauded Deutsche Bank, despite the fact that the bank had made money, and had even made it clear that they were more than eager to do more business with him.
But it was an open secret that the lawsuit was James’ way to draw revenge against Trump for his electoral victory in 2016.
Most experts knew that the judgment was built on such fragile grounds, particularly when an appeals court decided to significantly reduce the bond Trump needed to post in order to appeal from $464 million plus penalties to just $175 million.
And when lawyers from James’ office, as well as Trump’s legal team, appeared before the New York Court of Appeals for oral arguments, the five Justices on the bench gave a reaction that Democrats did not see coming.
Appellate Judge sheds light on lack of crime against supposed victim
Appellate court Justice David Friedman immediately grilled the Deputy New York Solicitor General Judith Vale over the need to bring this case forward, pointing out that Deutsche Bank is a sophisticated financial organization that did their homework on Trump and doing business with him.
He noted that it was clear and obvious that they did not just rely on Trump’s financial forms and reports when they made the decision to agree to terms of loaning.
“It hardly seems to justify bringing an action to protect Deutsche Bank against President Trump which is what you have here,” Friedman slammed. “You have two really sophisticated players in which no one lost any money.”
Friedman also dug into Vale over the mystical nature of the case brought against Trump, and how unique and unprecedented it was historically for New York.
“Because I’ve gone through the case that you’ve cited, and all of them always involved consumer protection aspect – it involved protection of the market,” the Justice added.
The other Justices even inquired on whether or not allowing the judgment to stand would set a fiery precedent that would grant the Attorney General to hold, essentially, limitless power to enforce the cited law against anyone they didn’t like.
“How do we draw a line, or at least put up some guardrails, to know when the AG [attorney general] is operating well within her broad – admittedly broad – sphere…,” Justice John Higgitt pitched in. “And when she is going into an area that wasn’t intended for her jurisdiction?”
Another Justice even tore into the decision to slap Trump with a $464 million penalty when both Trump and the bank had left the transaction totally satisfied.
“The immense penalty in this case is troubling,” Justice Peter Moulton suggested. “How do you tether the amount that was assessed by the Supreme Court to the harm that was caused here where the parties left these transactions happy?”
Just about everyone knew that the judgment would ultimately get tossed during appeal.
But sustaining the judgment was not the intended goal – forcing Trump to endure the process, plus all of the bad press was the true punishment for Trump.
James knew that if she could score the original victory, it would give a green light to the Democrats and their fake news media allies to paint Trump off publicly as a con man during the crucial, upcoming election.