OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Alina Habba, the attorney and spokeswoman for Donald Trump, has responded to a column by a legal expert who claimed that Trump’s appeal against a huge fine imposed by a New York judge during a civil fraud trial is unlikely to be successful.
Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy wrote in the National Review that while the fine of $355 million may be reduced, there is little chance that Trump’s appeal will be granted beyond that.
“To my mind, it is unlikely that Trump’s appeal will result in a clean win for either side,” he wrote in the Feb. 20 article.
“I anticipate that he will get material relief in terms of the dollar amount, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on the rest of the penalties. And those penalties matter, a lot,” he added.
That said, McCarthy also wrote that he thought the case was “nakedly partisan” and that he hoped it would be “overturned on appeal.”
McCarthy’s viewpoint was relayed to Habba by Fox News host Martha MacCallum during a show segment on Thursday, to which Habba responded that she would “welcome him to be part of the legal team if he knows the case better than the team that tried it for 11 weeks.”
“I’ve been on this case for the better of three years, and I can tell you right now there are truly no facts that support any of these decisions, and that, again, I can say will be made very clear in our appeal,” Habba argued.
Newsweek reported that, as of Friday, Trump’s appeal had not yet been filed. But his attorney, Chris Kise, told the outlet that the appeal would be filed within the 30-day timeframe.
The case “raises serious legal and constitutional questions regarding ‘fraud’ claims/findings without any actual fraud,” Kise said.
Newsweek added:
Engoron ruled in his judgment that Trump is also banned from taking out bank loans in New York and serving as a company director for three years.
Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, the former president’s two adult sons, were ordered to pay $4 million each and were barred from doing business in New York for two years.
A suit by New York Attorney General Letitia James said all three, The Trump Organization and two firm executives, Allen Weisselberg and Jeff McConney, fraudulently overstated the value of assets to deceive lenders. The Trump Organization was also prevented from applying for loans in New York for three years.
Following the ruling, a number of real estate investors said they would either leave New York or end any consideration of doing business there.
One of them, Grant Cardone of Cardone Capital, has instructed their teams to prepare to leave New York.
“We thought this year was the opportunity to come into Chicago, California, and New York City. I’ve been waiting for 40 years now to invest in that marketplace. I was completely confident this was the year to come,” Cardone told Steve Doocy on “FOX & Friends” on Wednesday. “And when that ruling happened, it was like pencils down. Don’t touch it. Don’t go there.”
New York Judge Arthur Engoron, who had already determined last fall that Trump committed fraud by overstating his assets when seeking favorable business loans despite the fact that none of the banks he did business with were harmed or lost money, levied the massive fine.
Cardone posted on X that his firm would “immediately discontinue” all underwriting on New York City real estate and will instead focus on other markets like Texas and Florida, which have much friendlier business climates and are run by Republicans.
Cardone further claimed that New York has risks “that outweigh the opportunities” in terms of property value and that the left-wing Democrats who run the state appear to be focused more on politics.
“We invest for 14,000 investors at Cardone Capital that depend on cash flow. And if I can’t predict the cash flow because of some ruling, or because of the migrants, or because I can’t evict people, New York City just keeps doing every single thing they can to sell real estate in Florida, not sell real estate in New York,” the fund manager noted.
