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Appeals court will not delay Donald Trump civil fraud trial

Published 09/28/2023, 03:14 PM
Updated 09/29/2023, 07:45 AM
© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Former U.S. President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a 2024 presidential campaign rally in Dubuque, Iowa, U.S. September 20, 2023. REUTERS/Scott Morgan/File Photo
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By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A New York appeals court on Thursday refused to delay Donald Trump's scheduled Oct. 2 civil fraud trial, after the former U.S. president accused the trial judge of wrongly refusing to throw out most of the case.

In a brief order, a five-judge panel of the Appellate Division, a mid-level appeals court in Manhattan, denied Trump's motion to postpone the trial.

It also lifted a Sept. 14 order by Justice David Friedman to put the trial on hold while it considered Trump's motion. Friedman was part of Thursday's panel.

The panel ruled two days after state court Justice Arthur Engoron found that Trump and his family business persistently and fraudulently overvalued his assets and net worth in order to obtain better terms on loans and insurance.

Trump had been sued in September 2022 by state Attorney General Letitia James, who accused him, his adult sons, the Trump Organization and others of "staggering fraud" in how they valued properties.

James is seeking at least $250 million in penalties, a ban against Trump and his sons Donald Jr and Eric from running businesses in New York, and a five-year commercial real estate ban against Trump and the Trump Organization.

Lawyers for Trump and the other defendants were not immediately available for comment. James' office had no immediate comment.

The case is unrelated to the four criminal indictments that Trump faces, including for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to all, and cast litigation against him as part of a politically-motivated, Democratic witch hunt as he seeks a return to the White House. James is a Democrat.

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Despite his legal woes, Trump holds a commanding lead for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

WITNESS LISTS

Trump sued Engoron on Sept. 14, seeking to delay the trial and accusing him of ignoring a June ruling from the appeals court that, according to Trump, required gutting James' case because many of her claims were too old.

Engoron's decision on Tuesday showed that he believed the appeals court ruling had little effect on James' case.

The judge said the defendants were living in "a fantasy world, not the real world," as they made up valuations for properties including Trump's Mar-a-Lago compound in Florida and Trump Tower penthouse in Manhattan.

Engoron found "conclusive evidence" that Trump had overstated his fortune by as much as $2.2 billion.

He also ordered the cancellation of certificates that let some of Trump's businesses operate.

This could force Trump to cede control to a receiver of properties including Manhattan's Trump Tower, a Wall Street office building, golf courses and his family estate in suburban Westchester County, New York.

Late on Wednesday night, the attorney general's office and defense lawyers disclosed lists of witnesses, potentially numbering well over 100, who may be called to testify.

Donald Trump and his adult sons appear on both lists, as do former Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg and controller Jeffrey McConney.

The attorney general's list also includes Trump's onetime personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen, who has turned against his former boss, and Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump, who the appeals court dismissed as a defendant in June.

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Latest comments

the suit says mar-a-Lago was valued as high as 739m when it should have been closer to 75m... trump further reported his trump tower apartment to be 30000 sq ft, when in reality it was 11,000 sq ft... that alone is cause for heavy fines and imprisonment, and there is a lot more...
Aw, come on. People lie all the time. No reason we shouldn't have a mendacious crook as a role model. "Johnny, we want you to grow up to be just like Trump."
yo bojo, this is fraud, and fraud is illegal.. geddit?
  "New York law empowers the AG to seek damages caused by fraudulent business behavior as a form of consumer protection. The law doesn’t require the AG to identify a victim or even demonstrate anybody suffered harm."  --  news.yahoo.com/why-new-york-state-is-suing-trump-instead-of-charging-him-with-crimes-140720431.html
Target says it will close nine stores in major cities, including in New York San Francisco, across four states because of theft and organized crime What Attorney General Letitia James doing about it??? She is not a political operative but a prosecutor.....is there anyone with brain around her to tell her
@Steve: You should contact Trump's legal team. They may not have thought of making invalid, uninformed and irrelevant arguments.
 Filing suits "without any evidence" is a Trump thing, not a Letitia James thing.  She actually won, and in cases with Republican judges.
oeg vokar, there is overwhelming evidence provided by his own inercircle, and Trump's own words... Trump is his own worst enemy.
Free trump
 Stalin worked like this, there is a person, there is a problem, there is no person, there is no problem... and he killed 20 million Where is your evidence, isn't it enough that you were lied to for 5 years about the Trump-Russia deal? Why do you like being naive and being lied to by liberal-communists?
oeg you obviously live inside the russian propaganda-bubble.. it is beyond any doubt that russia has and is interfering in American politics and society. as for trump, there is overwhelming evidence of his numerous crimes. and he is already a convicted rapist..
 Yup.  Yevgeny Prigozhin, who ran some russia troll farms, had already admitted to interfering in U.S. elections.
The real fraud Biden is for 50 yrs. NEVER was President. Trump was. All charges are B.S. and people with a brain know this. So funny how one man can scare the dems so bad. Bunch of liers.
It's a state, not Federal, case.  You're very confused.
Johnny boy, Trump along with the members of his inner circle, provided a lot of the overwhelming evidence used to indict him.
Trump has already proven to be a serial liar, sexual molester, tax dodger, and now has been convicted of banking fraud, insurance fraud is next. then there's the overwhelming proof of inserection and conspiracy to overthrow the government and putting American's national security in danger.... poor Jonny another victim of the maga propaganda machine...these are the facts John. there is overwhelming evidence against him mostly provided by Trump himself and his inner circle.According to them Trump new he had lost the election then decided to lie about it to you, and the rest of his supporters.
Imagine being a foreign investor considering investing large sums of money in the USA and arrive at the realization that one single political activist judge can override the expertise of bank and real estate assessors and commence to dissolve your business, devalue your net worth and destroy your brand image; despite bank testimony that all loans were paid in full and there were no victims.   Madness.
@Thom: You have it backwards. Imagine being a foreign investor considering investing large sums of money in the USA only to see that certain people can get away with cheating and not be prosecuted. One would think it was a place like Russia where there is no legal level playing field and only connections and influence matter. By prosecuting those who break the law, no matter who they are, the USA protects its reputation as a sound place to invest and do business.
How did the judge "override the expertise of ... real estate assessors"?  The judge never ruled on the valuation of any properties.  And the Trump side chose a bench trial.  It had the choice of a jury trial.
Trump will not attempt to move the criminal charges brought against him by Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis to federal court, and will stay with Georgia judge Scott McAfee.  His filing says, “This decision is based on his well-founded confidence that this Honorable Court intends to fully and completely protect his constitutional right to a fair trial and guarantee him due process of law throughout the prosecution of his case in the Superior Court of Fulton County, Georgia.”  I await Trump's/your future criticism of Judge McAfee after Trump brown-nosed him.
If there was fraud then why didn’t the bank(s) file the suit?
time for traitor-trump to start paying for his numerous crimes, and it can't happen soon enough.. his, and his cultist worshippers, illusion of impunity will soon evaporate as he starts breathing the prison air...
oeg vokar, the proven lies that he won the 2020 election, the value of his corporations to inserance companies banks and the US government the gifts of copyrights to his his daughter's Trump subsidiary company 40 million while she was a member of his administration and the 280 million dollar forgiveness for the loans to the trump company from Chinese state banks....
the gifts of 40 million in copyrights was given to Trump's daughter's subsidiary Trump company, by the communist Chinese government while she was a member of the Trump Administration.
gee, I wonder who's in bed with the Chinese Communists....its not biden...
Donald Trump losing control of his businesses is a good thing if he wins election.  It'll be harder for him to violate the Emoluments Clause in the 2nd term.  Less swampy!
FYI, Judge David Friedman was appointed in 1999 by then-Governor George Pataki, a Republican.
do the crime, do the time - or in this case, pay the fine +
 depends how ugly the evidence is, when presented at trial - the, i take the fifth mantra may finally wake up some of the clone car faithful
Trump showed he knows his base when he said, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters,”  "wake up some", but not the majority, of his base.  Hopefully, wake up most of the independents who voted for him.  He'd already took the 5th multiple times since losing the 2020 election.
There are a lot of sick people out there- even on investing apps. Sign of the Times
The NY AG is basically Trump's campaign manager at this point, she has helped push him up to the top of the polls. He is even polling higher than Biden right now. Who cares about a civil case in NY, Biden is currently having impeachment hearings in the House right now exposing his foreign money laundering.
i see you also live in fantasy world
 You know best what a fantasy world looks like, right?
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