New York Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron, the judge who presided over the civil fraud trial brought against former President Donald Trump by New York Attorney General Letitia James, is now embroiled in an investigation. That investigation is regarding his ruling in the trial and whether it was improperly influenced by a private conversation he had with a real estate attorney shortly before making his ruling in the Trump case.
As a reminder, Judge Engoron ruled that Trump had to pay a shockingly high fine. Under his ruling, former president Trump and the Trump Organization were ordered to pay a massive $354 million in damages, a sum that ballooned to $454 million because of interest as Trump fought it, and barred Trump “from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation or other legal entity in New York for a period of three years,” including the Trump Organization. Trump appealed that ruling and the fine was slashed dramatically before the appeal was heard to an amount he could pay in cash.
More recently, it was revealed that, just weeks before issuing the fine against Trump, Judge Engoron had a private conversation with real estate attorney Adam Leitman Bailey. That conversation is being investigated by the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct, which is probing whether that interaction led to Engoron improperly considering Bailey’s unsolicited advice.
The probe appears to have been sparked by Mr. Bailey, in an interview, claiming that he approached Judge Engoron to share his perspective as a real estate attorney on the case. Particularly, he said his intent was to help Judge Engoron understand the implications of a harsh ruling on the real-estate-heavy New York economy.
He said, speaking on February 16, the day of Judge Engoron’s decision, “I actually had the ability to speak to him three weeks ago.” He added, “I saw him in the corner [near the courthouse] and I told my client, ‘I need to go.’ And I walked over and we started talking … I wanted him to know what I think and why…I really want him to get it right.”
Further, Bailey indicated that Judge Engoron was receptive to the unsolicited advice on the matter, saying that Judge Engoron had numerous questions about the issue. He said, “[Judge Engoron] had a lot of questions, you know, about certain cases. We went over it.”
That private conversation between the lawyer and judge was a problem, however, as such conversations are prohibited under New York’s judicial conduct rules. The only exception is if all parties to the case are notified of the conversation and given a chance to respond, which here was not the case.
Watch Bailey’s interview here:
Retired Presiding New York Appellate Justice Alan Scheinkman, commenting on the matter, said that he was somewhat skeptical of Bailey’s account of the interaction. However, he noted that if the account given by Bailey is true, it needed to have been disclosed by Engoron, which it was not. He said, “If there’s any substantive dialogue about the law in a pending case, it should be disclosed.”
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