On Monday, the judge overseeing President Trump’s civil fraud trial wrote a rebuttal of the 45th President’s defense while rejecting his attempt to have the case decided in his favor.
LATEST: Judge Arthur Engoron, in a strongly worded ruling, has denied Donald Trump's most recent motion for a directed verdict to end his civil fraud trial. https://t.co/gxylptce6I
— ABC News (@ABC) December 18, 2023
Judge Arthur Engoron, who is overseeing President Trump’s civil fraud case in New York, dismissed the former president’s appeal for a directed ruling to clear him of any wrongdoing for the fifth time.
From Newsweek:
Engoron has already ruled that Trump committed fraud while filing financial statements for years, and is expected to decide on the size of the punishment against the former president sometime around late January or early February. Trump, the frontrunner in the GOP presidential primary, denies all wrongdoing and says the case is a politically motivated “witch hunt” that aims to stop him from winning the 2024 election.
Trump faces being banned from doing business in New York state, having his properties removed from his control, or being forced to pay a fine totaling hundreds of millions of dollars.
While rejecting Trump’s argument to rule in his favor, Engoron highlighted some of the “fatal flaws” in the former president’s defense, including the testimony from one of their expert witnesses in the trial, New York University Stern School of Business research professor Eli Bartov.
During his testimony, Bartov told the New York court that there is “no evidence whatsoever” that Trump or his family committed fraud with their financial statements. It was later revealed that Bartov was paid $1,350 an hour for his services to defend the former president, putting his total at $877,500.
Engoron said Trump and his legal team were wrong to assume that the court would accept Bartov’s testimony as “true and accurate,” adding: “Bartov is a tenured professor, but the only thing his testimony proves is that for a million or so dollars, some experts will say whatever you want them to say.”
In a series of posts on Truth Social, Trump lashed out at Engoron for having “mocked and excoriated” Bartov for “telling the Truth” in the judge’s latest ruling.
“The ignorant Judge did not even try to listen to the Expert Witness. This is a great insult to a man of impeccable character and qualifications,” Trump wrote. “The Judge ignores the Law!”
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