Two weeks into Donald Trump’s bank fraud trial in New York, it’s clear that the former president has no intention of actually trying to win the legal battle at this stage.
Instead, Trump’s legal team is working diligently to repurpose the trial as pretext for a future appeal—not to mention warping the proceedings into both a fundraising spectacle and an excuse to skip out on his other court dates.
For nine straight days, Trump’s defense lawyers have littered the court with legal landmines, objecting to nearly every bit of evidence submitted by New York Attorney General Letitia James and warning New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur F. Engoron that each decision he makes will be closely scrutinized by appellate judges—and likely reversed.
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At one point, Engoron had to remind Trump’s legal team, “Trials are… not an opportunity to relitigate what I’ve already decided… that’s why we have appeals.”
Rolling Stone cited one source within the Trump camp who described the current kamikaze plan of trying to seize minor victories within the self-created chaos as “Fyre Festival strategies,” a reference to the poorly planned 2017 music festival in the Bahamas that ended in disaster.
The stakes are high: Trump, a self-styled business tycoon, is at real risk of losing his real estate empire. Engoron has already ordered the Trump Organization’s business licenses revoked after concluding that the Trump family and their company’s top executives vastly inflated assets for years. Come December, he could order them to pay $250 million or more.
Team Trump is still irked that they have to defend real estate deals stretching back a decade because the judge hasn’t yet explicitly drawn a stark cutoff in 2016 or so that could shrink the attorney general’s case—something an appellate court instructed him to do before the trial began.
Now, Trump’s lawyers are objecting to anything that even hints at older material, even emails presented by James’ office that make references to the distant past.
But Trump’s defense team has also adopted a comically and deliberately irritating tactic. Anticipating a massive and detailed appeal, they have been asking long-winded questions about each line in each document—and repeating each question for every year from 2011 and beyond.
The tension reached a boiling point on only the trial’s third day, when the judge repeatedly advised that defense lawyers speed things along—only to have defense lawyer Jesus Suarez agree, then ignore him anyway.
“You’re not allowed to waste time,” Engoron said. “That is what this is becoming.”
“We will attempt to streamline this as much as possible,” lead defense lawyer Christopher Kise assured.
“Doesn’t seem like that yet,” the judge shot back.
“The devil’s in the details. I’m sorry, but it is,” Kise countered.
Things then got heated, as the judge called out Trump’s team on what’s become a patently obvious delay tactic.
“This is ridiculous!” Engoron said, turning his head to the dozens of journalists in the back of the courtroom. “To the reporters: I’m pounding the bench again. This. Is. Ridiculous! There's no point in going through each line. I'm just being logical here.”
What happened next was an encapsulation of what has become the go-to Trump legal strategy at this trial. Kise, in his characteristically condescending tone toward the older and more experienced judge, misconstrued what Engoron said and demurred.
“Let me make sure I understand,” Kise began. “You’re asking us to go line by line, but just ask the same question for each line?”
“I’ve never had to negotiate how to ask questions. I think it makes a poor record, frankly,” he added, in what seemed like a direct address to the court reporter whose notes will eventually be combed through by a panel of appellate judges. “For the record, I object to this.”
Engoron, seeing through the ploy, responded: “I have a thick skin, but it’s really being pierced here.”
Similar but less intense versions of that scene repeated as the days went by, with Kise often distorting what Engoron was ordering, then turning around and claiming the judge’s decisions were unprecedented and unfair.
In Trump’s other cases, like the criminal investigation for his alleged hoarding of classified records at Mar-a-Lago, his lawyers have relied on procedural delays and appeals to slow things down.
But this court battle stands apart simply for the many ways the former president has managed to drag his feet. So far, it’s working, as the trial is entering its third week with only half a dozen witnesses having testified. There’s no telling if an overall appeal will succeed, however, until the actual trial is over.
Two sources familiar with the situation told The Daily Beast that the former president’s lawyers are laser-focused on the appeal at this point, gleefully baiting the judge whenever they can to increase their chances of success at the New York appellate division’s First Judicial Department.
One of those sources noted that Trump, who keeps delivering angry speeches outside the courtroom and maintains a scowl inside the courtroom, has essentially resorted to theatrics to draw public attention to himself. The strategy was described as Machiavellian maneuvering two steps ahead of the Attorney General.
In reality, James is well aware of what’s going on. During a brief court recess on Oct. 4, she told The Daily Beast that Trump—who does not need to appear in person during this civil trial—only keeps doing so to use it as a fundraising tactic. And she ascribed the defense lawyers’ increasingly belligerent performance to what she perceived as their desire to please the big boss.
“They are playing to an audience of one,” James said.
Indeed, the Trump 2024 presidential campaign ramped up its email blasts during the early days of the trial, sending out themed messages that referenced the ongoing court fight.
“I just left the courthouse for the first day of my unjust trial in New York,” read the first email to do so, which ended with a plea to “please make a contribution of ANY amount—truly, even just $1—to peacefully DEFEND our movement from the never-ending witch hunts.”
There’s yet another twist in Trump’s attempt to turn lemons into lemonade. The former president, who’s drowning in legal trouble across the country defending himself from criminal indictments and personal lawsuits, has twisted this bank fraud trial into something akin to a doctor’s note.
By appearing in court during half of the first week at trial, Trump managed to squirm his way out of a potentially devastating deposition in his revenge lawsuit against his former attorney and fixer, Michael Cohen.
Trump, who’s known to say self-incriminating things under oath, would have been forced to answer damning questions about the way he employed Cohen as his mob-like consigliere for years. The Miami federal judge overseeing that case allowed him to skip a scheduled interview session to appear in New York for this trial—only to have Trump quickly ditch the lawsuit last week.
And now he’s doing it again.
As first reported in The Messenger, Trump plans to head back to Engoron’s courtroom next week, not-so-coincidentally overlapping with his scheduled deposition in a lawsuit brought by Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. Both former FBI officials’ careers spiraled when Trump used his power at the White House to drag their names through the mud, demonizing them for their roles in the much-maligned Trump-Russia investigation.
