An appeals court on Thursday tossed a roughly $500 million civil fraud judgment against President Donald Trump and his family, a “tremendous victory for” Trump and an effort by New York Attorney General Letitia James to “have a trophy win against” the president reduced from “what was a mounted marlin to something of a guppy,” says George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley.
“It has removed the fine and left in place the injunctive relief that President Trump can now appeal. So, it is possible that even that could go to the wayside,” he told Fox News on Thursday.
“The good news is really for the New York court system. This regains some of the credibility that was lost during this process,” Turley added.
“Many of us stood there in disbelief that James was allowed to do this. She succeeded in securing or she was fortunate enough to secure a very favorable judge, Judge [Arthur F.] Engoron, and I want to note, by the way, that both the judge and James tried to effectively price Trump out of even appealing the case.
“They insisted that he would have to pony up half a billion dollars just to question what they did in the case and it was an outrageous effort to effectively price out an appeal. It didn’t work. Now we can see that the appellate court said this should never have happened in terms of the fine,” he added.
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