After Trump’s Weekend Ranting, NYAG Dunks On Claims That His Speech Is Being Stifled
How are you going to argue that your speech is being chilled
when you never shut up?
(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Last night New York Attorney General Letitia James filed her opposition to Donald Trump’s Hail Mary pass to the federal judiciary demanding that it enjoin her investigation and/or force James to recuse herself from all matters Trump-related.
As the AG points out in the first paragraph, this issue is currently being adjudicated by the New York Supreme Court, where Justice Arthur Engoron forced Eric Trump to sit for a deposition and already adjudicated multiple privilege disputes. In fact, the Trump Organization has largely cooperated with the OAG during the 34 months of the investigation, and only decided that it was illegally tainted by bias when Trump, Ivanka, and Don Jr. got subpoenaed late last year.
Trump made the same arguments about Tish James’s supposed bias at the state court, where he lost. So in addition to res judicata, he may have a wee tiny abstention doctrine problem. And good luck arguing that you’ve been deprived of due process when your motion to quash a subpoena for testimony is scheduled for February 17.
How much more process do these people think they’re entitled to? And when did an almost three-year investigation become an emergency requiring judicial intervention — or more judicial intervention, to be precise?
As for the supposed harms, the motion skewers the claim that the OAG is somehow chilling the plaintiffs’ First Amendment right to speak since Donald Trump and his namesake son literally never shut up.
“[I]t is not readily apparent, given Mr. Trump’s frequent public statements and appearances, how Plaintiffs could plausibly establish any such chill,” the OAG writes, dropping a footnote to Trump’s speech Saturday in which he promised riots in the streets if he were ever indicted.
The motion failed to allude to Jr.’s frequent attempts to hold his jaw in place while livestreaming ad hominem attacks on the current president.
He should only be so lucky as to have someone who cared enough to stifle him! And his brother, too, since Eric Trump’s public tantrum about all the subpoenas he was defying is what prompted the OAG to sue in the first place, publicly docketing a motion to compel which outlined the laughable real estate valuations and possible undeclared loan forgiveness which formed the basis of her investigation.
Unfortunately this motion wasn’t full of juicy details like the state filings, including one last week that detailed the sweet deal Ivanka Trump got on her Park Avenue penthouse and described her as “the primary contact for the Trump Organization’s largest lender, Deutsche Bank” from which position she caused “misleading financial statements to be submitted to Deutsche Bank and the federal government.”
But it does include multiple references to “substantial evidence establishing numerous misrepresentations in Mr. Trump’s financial statements provided to banks, insurers, and the Internal Revenue Service.” So much for the claim that the public interest favors enjoining the investigation.
In fact, this case is so transparently ridiculous, that the OAG concludes by reminding the court that there’s a pending motion to dismiss, so if Judge Brenda Sannes, an Obama appointee, wants to yeet this whole stinker off the federal docket at once, that would probably be the most efficient use of time.
Of course, that would deprive ATL readers of the pleasure of making fun of another batguano insane Trump filing, but it seems unlikely that the plaintiffs will point to that as a public interest favoring the continuation of this turkey of a lawsuit.
Trump v. James [Federal Docket via Court Listener]
People v. Trump Org [State Docket]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.
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