A state appeals court ruling in New York last month that was viewed as a vindication for former President Donald Trump and his family astounded legal professionals and a number of those on the left.
In a fraud case brought by Attorney General Letitia James against Ivanka Trump, her family, and their company, Ivanka Trump was removed as a co-defendant. According to the court’s decision on June 27, certain allegations were too old to be incorporated in the complaint.
The Daily Beast stated that the development might make the Trump family’s overall fraud case more tenuous.
Alexander A. Reinert, a professor at Cardozo Law School who examined the appeal judgment, reportedly observed, “The time has rung. It gives an opportunity to the defendants to whittle down the claims.”
The current decision demonstrates the efficiency of Trump’s well-known stalling strategies and can cast doubt on James’ use of the “continuing wrong doctrine” to support his claim that the Trump family continues to make money off of lies. The article suggested that the rest of the household may have been protected from prosecution for alleged offenses that occurred earlier than 2014 as a result of the appellate court’s ruling to dismiss Ivanka.
“It’s puzzling,” said Daniel L. Feldman, a former attorney with the Attorney General’s office who has since become a professor at the City University of New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “There’s continuing harm and wrong. You could say that the fraud hasn’t ended, even though the misrepresentation or omission took place long ago.”
According to CNN, the former president and his two sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, continue to be co-defendants. According to a news statement from James from September 2022, the Trumps committed “years of financial fraud to obtain a host of economic benefits.”
“The lawsuit alleges that Donald Trump, with the help of his children Donald Trump, Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump, and senior executives at the Trump Organization, falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to induce banks to lend money to the Trump Organization on more favorable terms than would otherwise have been available to the company, to satisfy continuing loan covenants, to induce insurers to provide insurance coverage for higher limits and at lower premiums, and to gain tax benefits, among other things,” according to the outlet.
But once the Trump Organization complied with New York’s demands, the appeals court affirmed that Ivanka was not connected to the company throughout the pertinent period.
The court concluded that by the period the tolling agreement was signed, defendant Ivanka Trump was no longer included in the agreement’s term of the “Trump Organization.”
The court continued that “The allegations against defendant Ivanka Trump do not support any claims that accrued after February 6, 2016. Thus, all claims against her should have been dismissed as untimely.”
Trump praised the decision and referred to James’ complaint as “election interference” in a post he made on his social media platform, Truth Social. He is currently leading a rising field of GOP hopefuls for president in 2024.
A representative for James’ office promised to press on with the case in a statement to CNN.
“There is a mountain of evidence that shows Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization falsely and fraudulently valued multiple assets and misrepresented those values to financial institutions for significant economic gain,” the representative alleged to CNN.
“Those facts haven’t changed. This decision allows us to hold him accountable for that fraud, and we intend to do so,” the representative continued.
The court of appeals remitted the trial court with the lawsuit’s allegations against the remainder of the Trump family members so that it may “determine, if necessary, the full range of defendants bound by the [August 2021] tolling agreement.”
In a second lawsuit brought by racist Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Trump is accused of manipulating business records in order to purportedly conceal paying adult film star, Stormy Daniels. He is facing 34 charges in total.
There was a separate legal win for Trump and Americans in general this week.
On Monday, a federal judge rejected a Justice Department request to temporarily halt an order preventing senior Biden administration officials and multiple agencies from communicating with social media companies. The government had argued that the injunction was overly broad and might have the effect of stifling lawful actions.
In a 13-page decision rejecting the Justice Department’s request for a stay, former President Donald Trump’s federal appointee, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, reaffirmed that Missouri and Louisiana were sure to prevail on the main points of their action versus the Biden administration.
“Although this Preliminary Injunction involves numerous agencies, it is not as broad as it appears. It only prohibits something the Defendants have no legal right to do — contacting social media companies for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner, the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms,” Doughty declared.
Sources:
Daily Beast
CNN
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