Judge who fined Trump $500 million gets the books thrown at him

In New York a court revealed that a leading citizen had cooked the books by inflating questionable figures without any backing in reality Moreover his wild overvaluation was widely viewed as motivated by his self-aggrandizement The final released figures are so absurdly inflated that they were rejected in their entirety In the end he was off by over half a billion dollars That man is Judge Arthur Engoron After a New York appellate court unanimously threw out Engoron's absurd half-a-billion-dollar judgment and interest against President Donald Trump the irony was crushing It was Engoron who seemed as he characterized Trump onlookers as having purely denied reality It made his notorious reliance on an assessment of Mar-a-Lago as worth between million and million seem like good accounting NY APPEALS COURT THROWS OUT M PENALTY AGAINST TRUMP IN LETITIA JAMES CIVIL CASEIn the end he could not get a single judge to preserve a single dollar of that fine For various of us who covered that trial the most of vivid image of Engoron came at the start He indicated that he did not want cameras in the courtroom but when the networks indicated up Engoron took off his glasses and seemed to pose for the cameras It was a Sunset Boulevard moment We only need Gloria Swanson looking into the camera to speak to those wonderful people out there in the dark and announcing all right Ms James I'm ready for my close-up US APPEALS COURT BLOCKS TRUMP CONTEMPT PROCEEDINGS ORDERED BY BOASBERGThe close-up was not a good idea and on appeal it was perfectly disastrous The court revealed little legal or factual basis for his fine The purported observers not only did not lose a dime but they testified that they made money on the loans and craved new loans with the Trump administration That did not move Engoron From the start he was speaking to those wonderful people out there You did not have to go far In both the civil and criminal trials of Trump in New York there was a carnival atmosphere in the street outside the courthouse It was really not derangement as much as delirium Democrat New York Attorney General Letitia James had injected lawfare directly into the veins of New Yorkers Pledging in her campaign to bag Trump without bothering to name any crime or violation James was elected based on her recreational rather than legal appeal Yet James could not have succeeded if she had not had a judge willing to ignore reality and cook the books on the fines She needed a partner in lawfare She needed Engoron Even for particular anti-Trump commentators the judgment was impossible to defend and chosen acknowledged that they had never seen any development like this one brought in New York TURLEY HAILS TRUMP S 'TREMENDOUS VICTORY' AFTER CIVIL FRAUD PENALTY TOSSED BLASTS 'GROTESQUE' USE OF NY LAWJudge David Friedman gave Engoron a close-up that would have made Swanson wince He detailed how the underlying law has never been used in the way it is being used in this situation namely to attack thriving private commercial transactions negotiated at arm s length between highly sophisticated parties fully capable of monitoring and defending their own interests CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINIONHe accused Engoron of participating in an effort clearly directed by James at ending with the derailment of President Trump s political career and the destruction of his real estate business Other judges declared that Engoron's fine was so off base and engorged that it was an unconstitutional order under the Eighth Amendment protecting citizens from cruel and exceptional punishments So Engoron not only inflated the figures but shredded the Constitution in his effort to deliver a blow against Trump Trump can now appeal the residual parts of the Engoron decision imposing limits on the Trump family doing business in New York Several of those limits could be moot by the time of any final judgment Ironically if Engoron had shown a modicum of restraint he might have secured a triumph During the trial in New York I noted that he would have been smart to impose a dollar fine and limited injunctive relief That however required a modicum of judicial restraint and judgment Instead Engoron chose to walk down the stairway into infamy He was off by half a billion dollars which could put him in the Bernie Madoff class of judges In other words if he yearned to be remembered on that first day Arthur Engoron succeeded CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM JONATHAN TURLEY