OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
A Fox News contributor claims that Donald Trump has the right to sue New York Attorney General Letitia James for allegedly violating the former president’s civil rights.
Political analyst and frequent guest on the conservative news channel Deroy Murdock made the statement following the decision of a New York appeals court to postpone the payment of Trump’s $454 million civil fraud penalty resulting from James’ lawsuit. Instead, the former president was instructed to pay a $175 million bond within ten days while he filed an appeal with the court.
Judge Arthur Engoron declared in February that Trump had been filing false financial reports for years, inflating the value of his properties and other assets to get favorable terms from lenders. James’ office was unable to begin the process of seizing Trump’s properties due to the Monday financial guarantee payment delay.
Murdock restated his recommendations from an American Spectator article that Trump should sue James for remarks she made in 2018 when she was a candidate for New York state attorney general, Newsweek noted.
He said that James declared that she was going to oppose the Trump administration because it was “too male, too pale, and too stale.”
“Now, you could talk about stale ideas, that’s fine, but too male and too pale, that constitutes, basically, sex and race discrimination. So I think what President Trump ought to do is sue her on the basis of the 1964 Civil Rights Act,” Murdock told Fox News on Tuesday.
“Her office gets federal money for various subsidies for law enforcement activity. So federal money is flowing into her office and if she is engaged in that kind of sexual and racial discrimination and that kind of language, I think she’s wide open to exposure on the 1964 Civil Rights Act,” Murdock said.
“Donald J. Trump should sue Letitia James on the basis of Civil Rights,” Murdock added.
Trump has also accused James of conducting a “racist” and politically motivated investigation into him.
Writing in The American Spectator, Murdock suggested the former president should sue James as “what the hell does Trump have to lose?”
“He immediately should file a federal complaint and demand justice under America’s keystone civil-rights law. To see a white male multi-billionaire sue a [Black] female attorney general to secure his civil rights would be the ultimate man-bites-dog story,” Murdock wrote.
“For this extraordinary spectacle, America owes a hearty thank you to New York state’s leading despot, Attorney General Letitia James.”
Alina Habba, a lawyer representing Trump, is celebrating a recent win after an appellate court reduced his bond in a civil fraud case.
During an interview with Jesse Watters on Fox News last month, Habba expressed her satisfaction with the bond’s reduction from $454 million to $175 million, also taking the opportunity to criticize New York Attorney General Letitia James.
“I hope she took a little piece of humble pie today because that’s what was served to her, just a little, but we’ll be serving a lot more of that in the next couple of years,” she said about the AG.
When Watters asked if James and Judge Engoron felt a little bit “ashamed” and “embarrassed,” Habba jokingly suggested that they would require them to have a “moral compass” and a “conscious.”
AG James released a statement on the ruling, saying that the lowered bond does not undo the ruling that Trump is liable for fraud.
“Donald Trump is still facing accountability for his staggering fraud,” the statement read. “The court has already found that he engaged in years of fraud to falsely inflate his net worth and unjustly enrich himself, his family, and his organization. The $464 million judgment—plus interest—against Donald Trump and the other defendants still stands.”
“The ruling by a five-judge panel of appellate court judges was a crucial and unexpected victory for the former president, potentially staving off a looming financial disaster. Had the court denied his request — and had he failed to obtain the full bond — Mr. Trump risked of losing control over his bank accounts and, eventually, even some of his marquee properties,” the New York Times reported.
The outlet added, “Mr. Trump has 10 days to secure the bond, and two people with knowledge of his finances said he should be able to do so by then.”
Meanwhile, according to a new poll, Trump leads President Joe Biden by twice the margin of victory he had four years ago in the Lone Star State in the contest for Texas’ 40 electoral votes.
