Trump lawyer Alina Habba recently stated that she would provide a well-thought-out response to the ruling in former President Donald Trump’s New York fraud case in which the former President was ordered to pay nearly $355 million. Habba claimed that her response is “going to be an appeal” and “you can read it and weep.”
Habba slammed the trial’s lack of “common sense” while suggesting election interference was at play. She also pointed out that banks were not even involved in the lawsuit, where testimony indicates they were delighted to do business with the Trump organization.
“Let’s just go to common sense, because the order that you’re reading is not common sense. It’s absolutely absurd … and for me to try to explain to you how Judge Engoron got to his ridiculous number would mean I have to go speak about politics and the problem with the dual justice system and election interference right now. But the numbers are what they are. What bank, whatever, just write a check. So that’s how they feel they had a right to come in under a consumer fraud statute that’s never been used in this way and butt their nose into two private, sophisticated individuals in a contract that has never been breached. No loan defaults, no loss of money, no victims, no damages,” she said.
The lawyer also criticized the case, claiming that Letitia James was essentially performing property valuation. “Ms. [Letitia] James is supposed to value properties now? She’s got a bunch of associates under her, giving you what they think the value of Trump Tower is, and that’s the basis of a lawsuit?” Habba added.
“Meanwhile, Deutsche Bank and Trump have no problems, no lawsuits. No one’s saying they lost money. No one’s saying they were hurt. Everyone’s saying we did our due diligence. Trump’s saying we did our due diligence. Everybody looks at the values. They put a number on it, they get a deal. They make a contract, and then they’re good on the terms of that contract. Where is the harm? Because Ms. James and Judge Engoron say Mar-a-Lago is worth $18 million?” Habba continued.
The member of Trump’s legal team proceeded to sound off on Judge Engoron, who she claimed has a history of “terrible” decisions related to real estate. Habba asserted that Engoron had also demonstrated bias, stating he would potentially disagree with the jury’s findings.
“If you look at Judge Engoron he made a terrible decision that was reversed, hurting landlords and tenants in the state of New York, and he’s known for that. He has said on the record, that even if a jury says something and gets it wrong, he won’t agree with it, and he can use his own powers as a judge to completely disregard what a jury says,” she said. “This is who we are dealing with.”
“So if you want me to make sense of a nonsensical order, I just would assure you that number one, I’m not going to do it today. I’m going to do it thoughtfully, methodically, and it’s going to be on the appeal,” Habba said. “And you know, you can read it and weep, but that’s where we are at right now,” she added.
Watch Habba sound off on the Trump verdict here:
Featured image credit: Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alina_Habba_(53423082328).jpg
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