New York Appeals Court Upholds Contempt Sanction Against Trump

A trial judge's decision to hold Donald Trump in contempt for failing to comply with a demand for documents is upheld.

Today a New York state appeals court upheld a $110,000 contempt sanction against Donald Trump for failing to comply with a court order demanding the production of particular documents necessary for an investigation into the former President's business dealings conducted by the New York state attorney general. The brief order is only the latest legal setback for the former President.

From a CNBC report on the decision:

The panel of five justices ruled that Trump's contempt fine for not complying with a subpoena for the records was a "proper exercise" of the discretionary power of Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron.

The panel also said the fine of $10,000 per day "was not excessive or otherwise improper, under the particular circumstances." . . .

Engoron imposed the fine on Trump last April after ruling that he had repeatedly failed to give James' investigators business records from the Trump Organization that they were seeking for their probe of his real estate company.

"Mr. Trump has willfully disobeyed a lawful order of the court," Engoron said at the time.

Trump later paid the fine, but appealed Engoron's contempt finding.

Comments

[Reallynotbob]

Cue the whataboutism... but this is an unremarkable result. Of course the court imposed sanctions, just like it does on ordinary discovery scofflaws.

[M L]

Long story short, Democrats get really mad and fire up the lawfare war machines when you win an election on a 90s-era Clinton Democrat platform that they now consider Nazism.

[Bored Lawyer]

Yawn, stop defending the jackass loser with the Orange Hair. The NY AG probably had political motivations, but Team Trump reacted like a bunch of chumps. So they got smacked like the jackasses they are.
He would do everyone, including himself, a favor if he retired to golf at Mar-A-Lago.

[M L]

"The NY AG probably had political motivations"

And that is the part I was commenting on.

It seems like the most salient part, too, though I haven't been following things closely. Did they finally uncover one of the grand criminal conspiracies?

I've seen enough to generally be skeptical of and avoid defending any arguments Trump and his lawyers are making in court, or their actions with respect to litigation generally. Stonewalling a clown AG who ran on "lock him up" doesn't seem too bad, but defying a subpoena takes it too far IMO.

[Social Justice is neither]

Thanks for your support of the political regime attacking it's enemies be any means necessary. With supporters like you we'll soon see real communism and it will be grand.

[Bored Lawyer]

Here's a clue. The best chance of communism taking over is to have Trump be the nominee. That loser will lose again to Biden, who will continue to act as a carboard-cutout president for a cabal of woke Marxists. Four more years of that, and we can start calling each other comrade.

[Nige]

'a cabal of woke Marxists'

You people are a joke.

[bernard11]

Again, we find that there are those who can't imagine that Trump could have done anything illegal, or else that under no circumstances should he be prosecuted regardless.

I think "cultists" is an appropriate term for those individuals.

[Nige]

Clinton ran on building a border wall, banning Muslims and putting his wife in jail?

[hoppy025]

No, she ran on giving free shit to her melanin-rich constituency.

[John F. Carr]

The contempt order was affirmed without costs. Did Trump get off easy? Or is that standard procedure when the government is the prevailing party?

[Bored Lawyer]

Usually only awarded on appeal if the losing side was completely meritless. In any event, costs are generally chump change, just printing the briefs and maybe some other minor costs.

[mydisplayname]

I wholeheartedly agree that a person who states that "a diligent search had failed to locate any responsive documents in his possession or custody, without providing any search or document retention policy details" is contemptable.

Hopefully, someone will pass that along to both Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. What's good for the gander is good for the geese, after all.

[not guilty]

What subpoena has Joe Biden defied? Please be specific.

[hoppy025]

https://images.law.com/contrib/content/uploads/sites/389/2018/07/engoron_arthur-Article-201807131927.jpg

Here's the judge who issued the contempt fine. That should tell you all you need to know.

[Bored Lawyer]

Really, what does it tell you?

[hoppy025]

That he's a bitter, ugly, yellow-teethed, balding loser.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

No one who evaluates writers by appearance would spend time at the Volokh Conspiracy . . . in part because they'd still be trying to get this out of their eyeballs.

[not guilty]

Why is compliance with subpoenas such a burr under Donald Trump's saddle?

If Trump had not stiffed (and through his agents affirmatively misled) the DOJ regarding the D.C. grand jury subpoena for classified documents in his possession, he would be in a much stronger position vis-a-vis the documents found at Mar-a-Lago.

[Bored Lawyer]

Do you know the fable of the frog and the scorpion?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog

[David Nieporent]

If Trump had not stiffed (and through his agents affirmatively misled) the DOJ regarding the D.C. grand jury subpoena for classified documents in his possession, he would be in a much stronger position vis-a-vis the documents found at Mar-a-Lago.

That's the understatement of the millennium. If he had not stiffed/misled the DOJ, this whole thing about documents at Mar-a-Lago would be a complete non-issue, a page A23 half-column story at best.

[EscherEnigma]

I honestly think that even up to the raid itself, if Trump had just not gone to the media, not tried to fight the retrieval in court, not gone out of his way to publicize the whole thing and turn it into a partisan mess, then it would have been, at worst, a minor scandal.

If the DOJ does end up prosecuting him for this (and I remain skeptical they'll take that step) it'll be because they feel they need to in order to fully and publicly exonerate themselves.

[Spinach Chin]

They won't. Of course, they CAN'T. Through their hubris they've backed themselves into a corner, and now that Biden has been accused of similar "crimes" (and in some ways, much worse), prosecuting Trump will appear corrupt. Which, of course, it would be, unless they also prosecute Biden, and we know that won't happen. And this simple fact proves their motivation has nothing to do with the law or justice, and everything to do with continuing to attempt to punish someone they hate.

[David Nieporent]

Through their hubris they’ve backed themselves into a corner,

This comment would have made sense if "their," "they," and "themselves" referred to the Trump team. But since it's evident from the rest of your comment that you mean DOJ, it's just insane.

For one thing, Biden isn't accused of any crimes, let alone "much worse" ones.

[David Nieporent]

Trump did make it 100 times worse for himself after the fact, but once it got to the point of an actual search warrant, it was never going to be a non-story. His chance to head it off was when he got the subpoena (or, of course, earlier!); if he had just turned over everything at that time, so that they didn't have any p.c. to get a warrant, then it would've been nothing more than a blip.

[Bored Lawyer]

Scorpions gotta scorp!

[Spinach Chin]

Absolute rubbish.

It was insane to entertain the possible prosecution of Trump. And now that they've found that Biden has had classified info in multiple places, and in far less secure locations, it makes them look like fucking amateurs.