A high-profile real estate lawyer who once told a tenant in a case that they should commit suicide told a New York City news station that he approached the judge in Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial to volunteer a bit of unsolicited advice ahead of the potentially ruinous $355 million verdict that was handed down.
That interaction is now the subject of an investigation by the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct, sources familiar with the matter told NBC New York Wednesday.
Adam Leitman Bailey, an oft-quoted attorney who weighed in on the trial as it proceeded but who had no direct involvement in the case, made the claim in an on-camera interview with NBC New York on Feb. 16, hours before Judge Arthur Engoron’s ruling was made public.
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“I actually had the ability to speak to him three weeks ago,” Bailey said, according to the station. “I saw him in the corner [at 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.”
He told NBC New York that he was hardly a fan of Trump, and that he’d “explained” to Engoron that a fraud statute at play in the case had not been created to help shutter a major company, particularly in a case without obvious victims.
The law they discussed is likely the so-called “repeated fraud” statute, or Executive Law 63(12), which only requires that prosecutors show “repeated fraudulent or illegal acts,” not necessarily “intent to deceive or that anyone actually gets duped or loses money,” according to an Associated Press article from January in which Bailey is quoted. (“This sets a horrible precedent,” he said of the statute’s potential use in Trump’s case.)
Engoron “had a lot of questions, you know, about certain cases,” Bailey told NBC New York. “We went over it.”
Bailey’s law firm did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Beast on Wednesday evening.
It was not immediately clear if the conversation might have been inappropriate or a breach of state legal conduct rules, which strictly regulate what interactions a judge can have regarding a pending case outside of a courtroom. Through a court spokesperson, Engoron denied any misconduct and said he had been “wholly uninfluenced” by Bailey.
“No ex parte conversation concerning this matter occurred between Justice Engoron and Mr. Bailey or any other person,” Al Baker, a spokesman for the New York State's Office of Court Administration, said in a written statement to NBC New York. “The decision Justice Engoron issued February 16 was his alone, was deeply considered, and was wholly uninfluenced by this individual.”
Baker did not reply when asked by the station whether Engoron had engaged in conversation with Bailey or asked him questions about precedent.
Engoron’s $355 million penalty included the imposing of interest that would eventually see Trump’s tab balloon to an eye-popping $454 million. The judge also barred the former president from serving in top roles at any New York company for three years.
The question of outside influence wrought by Bailey in Trump’s case nominally falls to the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct. Sources familiar with the matter told NBC New York that the commission is investigating the interaction.
The commission’s administrator, Robert Tembeckjian, told The Daily Beast in a statement that he had no comment on the matter, citing a confidentiality statute in the judiciary code.
Of nearly 3,000 complaints filed with the commission last year, only about 200 resulted in an investigation, according to its data. The vast majority ended without a finding of wrongdoing.
In a second on-camera interview with NBC New York in the wake of the judgment, Bailey denied that either he or Engoron had acted improperly.
“We didn’t even mention the word Donald Trump,” he said. Asked if he thought the judge understood him to be talking about the Trump case, he quipped: “Well, obviously we weren’t talking about the Mets.”
The station reported on Wednesday that both Bailey and Baker, Engoron’s spokesperson, haven’t responded to any follow-up questions on the matter since February.
Apparently something of a well-known character on the New York legal scene, Bailey had his law license suspended for four months by a state appellate court in 2019 over a pair incidents three years prior. In the first, he barged into an arbitration hearing, began snapping photos of witnesses, and said, “This will be in the newspaper when I put this in there after we kick your asses.”
In the other, he told a tenant involved in a case he was litigating that they were worthless and should just kill themselves.
“You have no idea what you stepped into,” Bailey reportedly told the tenant. “Welcome to my world. Now you’re my bitch.”
Bailey’s lawyer said in a statement at the time that he was “deeply apologetic for his unfortunate conduct.”
