Letitia James ‘Losing the War’ Against Donald Trump-Legal Analyst
New York Attorney General Letitia James is "losing the war" against former President Donald Trump in his civil fraud case, attorney and legal analyst Jonathan Turley said on Saturday.
The former president and others associated with The Trump Organization were found liable by New York Judge Arthur Engoron in February for misleading lenders and insurance companies to obtain more favorable terms. The order stems from a lawsuit brought by James who investigated Trump's organization for years before bringing the lawsuit against him in September 2022.
Trump, the GOP's presidential nominee, has decried the lawsuit and his nearly half a billion in financial penalties as a form of "election inference." His lawyers appealed the ruling to New York's intermediate appellate court, arguing in part that the size of the penalties was "draconian" and that some of the allegations brought against Trump were outside the state's statute of limitation, meaning they should have never been brought to trial.
Meanwhile, a five-judge panel heard arguments from both sides of the case on Thursday where a pair of judges appeared to hint at being receptive to some of Trump's arguments, including that the entities Trump is accused of defrauding did not lose money or were otherwise harmed by his actions.
In an opinion column published by The Hill on Saturday, titled, "Letitia James may be winning lawfare but losing the war," Turley, a professor at George Washington University Law School who has been supportive of Trump in his legal cases, discussed the case.
While noting several cases James has worked on as an attorney general, Turley wrote that James could be "losing the war" in the civil fraud case as her office "faced openly skeptical justices" this week in a New York appeals court.
"In appellate arguments this week, James's office faced openly skeptical justices who raised the very arguments that some of us have made for years about the ludicrous fine imposed by Judge Arthur Engoron," Turley wrote, specifically mentioning Justice David Friedman and Justice Peter Moulton.
Friedman had noted that the law James used to bring the lawsuit "is supposed to protect the market and the consumers—I don't see it here."
