New York Attorney General Letitia James is seeking to reinstate a fine on President Donald Trump for business fraud.
James’s office filed a notice of appeal with the New York Supreme Court and follows the New York Appellate Division’s First Judicial Department tossing the estimated $500 million fine in August. “While the injunctive relief ordered by the court is well crafted to curb defendants’ business culture, the court’s disgorgement order, which directs that defendants pay nearly half a billion dollars to the State of New York, is an excessive fine that violates the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution,” Judges Dianne T. Renwick and Peter H. Moulton wrote in the August 21 decision.
“While harm certainly occurred, it was not the cataclysmic harm that can justify a nearly half-billion-dollar award,” the ruling added.
Judge David Friedman condemned the lawsuit, writing that James’s “ultimate goal was not ‘market hygiene’ … but political hygiene, ending with the derailment of President Trump’s political career and the destruction of his real estate business. The voters have obviously rendered a verdict on his political career. This bench today unanimously derails the effort to destroy his business.”
President Trump called the ruling “total victory.”
“It was a Political Witch Hunt, in a business sense, the likes of which no one has ever seen before,” he wrote on Truth Social, in part. “This was a Case of Election Interference by the City and State trying to show, illegally, that I did things that were wrong when, in fact, everything I did was absolutely CORRECT and, even, PERFECT.”
