Lawyers representing Donald Trump and the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James both filed for a summary judgment from the judge overseeing the $250 million civil suit Wednesday, accusing the former president and his Trump Organization of fraud.
As might be expected, the defense and the prosecution have differing views about how the case should be adjudicated.
According to the prosecutors who are seeking the summary judgment that would preclude a trial, they want Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron to find against the former president and his company, claiming they have a rock solid case supplemented by Trump's testimony in a deposition that was recently made public.
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As the New York Law Journal reports, Trump attorneys Michael Madaio and Clifford Robert are seeking a "summary judgment that Engoron should dismiss the case entirely. They argue many of the claims are time-barred, and that the allegedly defrauded institutions 'have never complained, and indeed have profited from their business dealings' with Trump."
According to attorney Andrew Celli, speaking to the Law Journal, "His [Trump's] defense is what you might call a ‘no-harm, no-foul defense.’ Their argument is ‘the banks were fine with this and everybody got paid in the end.’”
Celli added, "The number of different ways that they [prosecutors] show there were misstatements in the statements of financial condition is staggering. It’s not just that there were one or two transactions. As laid out by the Attorney General, this was a concerted, long-term and deliberate effort to misstate the assets of the former president through a number of different forms and different methodologies.”
Taking the prosecutor's side, Celli said the case might be better settled by a judge who can understand the scale of the alleged fraud in ways a jury might not.
“This is someone who claims to be worth $6 billion, yet the AG’s Office says it’s more like $2 billion. I don’t know how an ordinary juror would react to the difference between those numbers,” he said. “This is a case where a judge with sophistication, experience and a sense of what materiality means under the law will be more attuned to determine whether certain facts mattered. That might be different for a person whose budget is $49,000 a year before taxes.”
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