Donald Trump and Judge Engoron have been going at each other since this trial started.
When Trump took the stand, it all finally came to a head.
The back and forth that occurred when Trump was on the stand was something most of us have never seen in a courtroom before.
Engoron made it quite clear he did not want to hear Trump offer up his opinion; that he only wanted him to directly answer the questions being asked.
At one point, after Trump’s attorney Alina Habba defended Trump’s rants on the stand, Engoron stated:
“I am not here to hear what he has to say, now sit down!”
Donald Trump reportedly responded to his attorneys at the table, stating:
“This is a very unfair trial. Very, very and I hope the public is watching.”
However, Trump’s attorneys noted that when prosecutors were asking their questions, the questions were not being “succinct” enough.
At the end of the day on Monday, Judge Engoron extended the gag order to two of his attorneys, Chris Kise and Alina Habba.
The order stated:
“All counsel are prohibited from making any public statements, in or out of court, that refer to any confidential communications, in any form, between my staff and me.”
You just knew the comments made after the day’s hearing would be explosive after seeing how things played out in court, and they lived up to expectations.
Habba went absolutely ballistic on the courtroom steps during a break on Monday…
The fact that Engoron issued a judgment prior to any evidence being presented in the courtroom to revoke Donald Trump’s business license said about all we needed to see in this case.
Donald Trump never had a chance in this case… he has an attorney general who campaigned on “nailing” him, who also filed charges in a very specific manner to avoid a jury trial, and a judge who clearly made up his mind before the trial ever started.
Trump’s best chance to win this case will be on appeal, especially when you consider at the very heart of the case are the valuations on his properties, which were clearly lowballed.
The one area that Trump continues to hammer, however, is that nobody was harmed and all the loans were paid back, but that does not matter because of the nature of the charges filed by Letitia James.
The only thing she needs to prove is that Trump’s figures were inaccurate, which is why I believe a new property valuation could tip the scales in Trump’s favor on appeal.
