Former deputy independent counsel Sol Wisenberg ripped the ruling in former President Donald Trump’s civil fraud case as “extremely dubious” on Friday.
Democratic Attorney General Letitia James of New York filed a lawsuit against Trump in September 2022, alleging he overstated the value of real estate holdings. Judge Arthur Engoron’s ruling ordered Trump to pay more than $350 million and banned him from being an officer or director for any New York company or organization for three years. (RELATED: ‘A Manifest Injustice’: Legal Experts Respond To Verdict In Trump’s New York Fraud Case)
“I certainly don’t see how the part of the decision that imposes a $355 million judgment is supported by the evidence, because as the judge points out in the very first paragraph of his opinion, and as you pointed out, there’s no loss from the bank,” Wisenberg told “Ingraham Angle” guest host Jeanine Pirro. “The loans were repaid. Now, certainly you can legally engage in fraud of all kinds each if the victim doesn’t lose money, but to impose a penalty of $355 million and to bar him for three years and his sons for two years seems to me to be completely out of proportion to the actual loss here, which was zilch.”
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“I have a question for everybody, which is where were all of these people during the 35 years before Donald Trump became an announced candidate for president?” Wisenberg asked. “Why weren’t these people investigating this alleged fraud? People, if there is fraud going on, the U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York, the district attorney’s office in Manhattan, it doesn’t seem like they were doing their job at all, it appears there was no effort whatsoever to even look at former President Trump until he became a controversial political figure.”
James promised to investigate Trump’s finances during her 2018 campaign for attorney general.
“It strikes me to be constitutionally extremely dubious to basically impose $355 million judgment in a case where there is no loss,” Wisenberg said. “That is just mind boggling to me. I have never seen a case where that happened.”
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