Donald Trump on Friday was hit with a massive legal judgment ordering him to pay hundreds of millions of dollars, but parts of that 92-page ruling are still making their way into the public view.
Justice Arthur Engoron's massive ruling amounts to a more than $350 million bill for Trump, and the opinion also slams the former president, his sons, and his partners for more than just fraud. The judge even included a quote from Alexander Pope, the English poet who coined the phrase, “To err is human, to forgive is divine.”
But there is something else buried in that ruling, and it's time to dig it out, a legal expert said on Friday.
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Lisa Rubin, a legal analyst on MSNBC, posted on social media about a footnote in the ruling that caught her by surprise.
"Remember that Weisselberg severance agreement? So does Judge Engoron," Rubin said, adding that the jurist had dropped "a curious footnote about one provision in particular, as if to suggest to Weisselberg that Trump can’t hold him to an unlawful promise."
The agreement to which Rubin refers is something that came out during the trial. Specifically, New York prosecutors focused on a severance package paid to former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg after he was convicted of dodging taxes as they concluded their $370 million civil fraud case against the ex-president.
It was argued that the Weisselberg payment could be considered a reward after the ex-executive "took the complete fall" for the Trump Organization.
Now, it appears as though Engoron is still interested in this particular aspect.
"Although not before this court, such provision would almost certainly be unenforceable as against public policy, to the extent that it restricts full and truthful cooperation with legal investigations and actions," he wrote in the Friday footnote.
