'I wouldn't bet on him': Expert shows why Trump won't succeed appealing fraud verdict
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"I would not bet on him and I'm not sure who would," he said. "Part of the reason is that the trial judge gets so much deference from the appeals courts, especially on the facts and especially in this case.
In his scathing 92-page opinion, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron blamed Trump and his company for falsifying info, and said they were going to keep it up. He said that they were “likely to continue their fraudulent ways” and that the former president and his co-defendants “failed to accept responsibility."
“This is a venial sin, not a mortal sin,” Engoron noted. “They did not rob a bank at gunpoint. Donald Trump is not Bernard Madoff. Yet, defendants are incapable of admitting the error of their ways.”
Goodman said that Engoron wrote the opinion with the threat of appeal in mind. And that is why he cast many of Trump's defense witnesses and his two grown sons Don Jr. and Eric as having their credibility "severely damaged."
"And for one of their star witnesses, this particular expert at the end, lost all credibility in the eyes of the court," added Goodman.
That was a rebuke of the expert defense witness, New York University Accounting Professor Eli Bartov.
“Bartov is a tenured professor, but all that his testimony proves is that for a million or so dollars, some experts will say whatever you want them to say,” Engoron wrote after his testimony.
Indeed, it was discovered that Bartov, who praised Trump's books as showing “no evidence here of concealment," was paid nearly $1 million mostly paid for by the pro-Trump political action committee Save America.
Because of this Goodman suspects the appeals court "will have a very hard time overturning because there has to be a clear error and there's deference to this judge."