The New York Attorney General’s office is finally calling out Donald Trump on the desperate Hail Marys his lawyers have heaved toward the heavens at his bank fraud trial, where his team may have actually broken a state record for the number of ridiculous requests for a total victory in court.
“Unlike a fine Bordeaux, defendants’ case for a directed verdict does not improve with age,” AG special counsel Andrew Amer wrote in a court filing on Monday.
While noticeably failing at every turn during the nearly three month trial, the former president’s defense lawyers repeatedly asked the judge for a “directed verdict,” a legal maneuver that declares outright victory and immediately kills the case.
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In the legal world, it’s a long shot request that almost never works. Directed verdict requests occasionally come up during a trial—but even then, only once.
But lawyers representing the former president, two of his sons, a couple of executives, and several Trump companies tried it half a dozen times—stunning legal scholars and former judges. On Monday, the AG’s office tore into the Trumps for wasting time in court.
“The motion, as with many of the defendants’ courtroom antics and maneuvers during the course of this trial, is nothing more than a political stunt designed to provide Mr. Trump, his co-defendants, and their counsel with sound bites for press conferences, Truth Social posts, and cable news appearances,” Amer wrote.
But he also noted that those requests only got more ridiculous as time went on, because the evidence presented at trial only made it more clear—not less—that Trump routinely lied on personal financial statements to score bank loans and insurance policies. Justice Arthur F. Engoron shot down every attempt by the Trumps with increasingly exasperated shrugs ranging from “denied” to “absolutely denied.” And he’s expected to toss this one out too—perhaps for the last time.
In Monday’s cheeky, three-page filing, Amer noted that “additional evidence cannot possibly lead to a better outcome” for them.
The hammer came down swiftly and forcefully on Monday. Engoron issued his order in the afternoon, denying all half dozen requests in one fell swoop. But the judge also had a searing take on Trump's decision to hire Eli Bartov, a New York University accounting professor, as an expensive trial defense expert who insisted that all real estate values are relative and couldn't find a single thing wrong with Trump's value-inflating business practices—despite the rampant, documented fraud.
"Bartov is a tenured professor, but all that his testimony proves is that for a million or so dollars, some experts will say whatever you want them to say... by doggedly attempting to justify every misstatement, Professor Bartov lost all credibility," Engoron wrote.
This could be the final legal scrimmage of the year for this case, which picks back up for closing arguments in January. The judge is expected to decide how badly to punish the Trumps early next year.
