Blair’s are of Irish descent. A famous Irish curse can be stated succinctly - “May you get your wish”.
Letitia James became attorney general of New York on a promise to “get Donald Trump” and won her nonsensical “fraud” case under an arcane New York law that permits fraud to be found where no one was defrauded - that is, there was no one who suffered any deprivation from the deceit comprising the alleged fraud. In every other jurisdiction on Earth, fraud requires both deceit and deprivation.
The elements of the tort of fraud are well known and include injury to the plaintiff.
Fraud also requires not only a false statement but also a finding that the entity defrauded relied on the false statement. Since the banks who financed Trump did their own due diligence, they cannot be found to have relied on Trump’s representation as to value. The absence of damages or reliance are likely fatal to the New York judgment on appeal
With the compliance of a leftist judge, and despite no person losing a dime on the real estate Trump allegedly “over valued”, that judge levied a fine that requires Trump to post a bond of about $450 million by tomorrow or James can being the process of seizing his assets. In making his finding of fraud, the judge found as fact that Trump’s Mara Lago property was worth only $18 million, making the judge a laughing stock since that property is likely worth hundreds of millions.
Regardless, judges are empowered to find “facts” even if the “facts” they found are devoid of fact. Judges are often described as “triers of fact” and their findings hold unless overturned on appeal for being “palpably wrong”. It is hard to imagine - even in the Alice in Wonderland U.S. justice system where Democrat judges are elected and attorney’s general are elected based on a promise to attack a citizen - that any appeal court will not find the $18 million valuation of Mara Lago is not “palpably wrong”. It is an absurd judgment arrived at for the sole purpose of attacking a candidate for President that neither James nor the judge wanted on the November ballot.
So what happens now?
In my opinion, Trump should do nothing and just let James start to seize property. In the byzantine New York real estate market with Trump owning fractions of properties with mortgages secured on the properties, James will spend the next several years trying to figure out what to seize and how to realize on the seizure. Instead of prosecuting criminals or other political adversaries, she will spend her days in an area where she has no knowledge or competence and find herself out of her depth, mired in complexity, and a pariah in New York business circles as other major business owners realize that the state can attack them without due process or justification. Businesses leaving New York can’t be a good election platform for a governor.
New York governor Kathy Hochul is a dyed in the wool Democrat and no fan of Donald Trump. She has the power to pardon Trump on the “trumped up” charges on which he was convicted of fraud, and her knee jerk reaction is undoubtedly “no way”. But watch that space as the inevitable consequences of judicial over reach start to affect her popularity and New York starts to suffer a business exodus.
What goes around comes around. If Trump does nothing at all with respect to posting a $450 million bond, and focuses on his election campaign, the “lawfare” that underlies the attack on Trump in New York will not age well. Trump will likely be elected given the alternative is a candidate showing signs of dementia who appears to be corrupt. American politics is a blood sport and like all blood sports, both antagonists get bloodied.
Doing nothing seems like a sensible option for Trump and will not be a boon for James or Hochul. As they say in Ireland “may you get your wish”.