The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s bank fraud trial is having none of the former president’s attempts to call for a mistrial, defending his law clerk and his own ability to be impartial as the real estate tycoon makes a longshot bid to scrap the entire legal battle.
In a six-page order on Friday, Justice Arthur F. Engoron responded to the Trump team’s latest request, calling the attempt “nonsensical.”
On Wednesday, the billionaire’s lawyers formally requested a mistrial—a desperate bid to avoid the increasingly likely outcome that the tycoon will lose his real estate empire and some $250 million or more over the way he routinely lied about his wealth on official documents.
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His defense lawyers whined about the ongoing trial in a lengthy legal memo that portrayed the judge as unfair—taking particular aim at his law clerk, who for years has interjected in court to shut down shenanigans and delay tactics by Trump’s legal team. This week’s outsize legal request followed weeks of courtroom sparring between the tycoon’s defense attorneys and Engoron.
Since the start of the trial in October, Engoron has repeatedly punished Team Trump for launching personal attacks against his top legal adviser, the attorney Allison Greenfield.
Engoron issued two gag orders—one against Trump and the other, a rare measure against the lawyers themselves—as well as $15,000 in fines. In some ways, the mistrial motion was a violation of that order disguised as a legal memo, because it resurfaced the same ad hominem attacks against Greenfield and accused her of showing a raging bias by citing her monetary donations to Democratic political groups. Trump’s lawyers complained about what they called “co-judging” by a lawyer who was never appointed to the bench.
But Engoron shut that down on Friday in his six-page order, rejecting any notion of “co-judging,” asserting his own right to have a personality, and dismissing the Trump team’s desperate bid as unwarranted. .
“My principal law clerk does not make rulings or issue orders—I do,” he wrote. “As I have explained on the record in open court, I have… an absolute unfettered right to consult with my law clerks in any way, shape, or form I choose.”
He lambasted Trump’s longshot request as “utterly without merit,” and also jabbed at his lawyers for blatantly misconstruing what he said in court during the former president’s testimony in court last week.
Trump’s lawyers had complained that Engoron said, “I’m not here to hear what [Donald Trump] has to say.” But the judge pointed out that they specifically left out what followed immediately after.
“Such argument is disingenuous and made in bad faith, as defendants omitted what I said immediately after that sentence, which is, ‘I’m here to hear him answer questions,’” Engoron said.
Engoron also defended Greenfield’s political contributions to Democrats, noting that she has actually been seeking to be elected as a New York judge herself. In Friday’s order, he pointed to a 1998 legal ruling that carved out an exception for court staffers who are actively running for elected office that allows them to exceed a $500 donation cap by making contributions to their own campaign—something that Engoron said would logically include having Greenfield buy tickets to attend political functions to further her own campaign.
Trump’s legal team had hoped the mistrial motion would at least draw attention to the judge and his clerk, which it did. But Engoron made clear the matter is dead now, calling any attempt at exploring this issue “futile.”
“I stand by each and every ruling, and they speak for themselves,” he wrote.
But pressure is mounting against the judge, as Trump has successfully managed to get an appellate court to intervene mid-trial on other matters.
On Thursday, the New York appellate division’s first department temporarily halted Engoron’s two gag orders and monetary fines, freeing up Trump to immediately start attacking the judge’s clerk again and drawing the rage of his MAGA followers against the court employee.
