When the judge overseeing Donald Trump’s bank fraud trial reminded him this week that he alone would decide his fate, the incensed former president leaned over to the lawyer on his left and grumbled, “I wish I’d had a jury trial,” according to two people who overheard him.
But there’s a reason Trump isn’t getting a jury trial: His own attorneys didn’t ask for one. At least, they didn't ask for one using the proper legal channel and on the correct legal timeline, according to court records and the lawyers themselves.
In recent days, Trump and his allies have complained that the New York Attorney General’s case—already doomed to dismantle his real estate companies and potentially empty his bank accounts—ended up in the hands of a single man, Justice Arthur F. Engoron.
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Day after day outside the courtroom, Trump angrily decries his “Democrat judge” and what he claims is a “rigged trial” for denying him the right to be adjudicated by a six-person jury.
Meanwhile on social media, the anti-MAGA schadenfreude is in overdrive with an inaccurate tale that Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, simply forgot to “check off a box” requesting a jury trial.
The reality is a bit more complex.
Technically, Habba did request a jury trial. The Daily Beast was there in court when she did. But neither she nor anyone else on the entire defense team—Christopher Kise, Michael Madaio, Armen Morian—ever followed up. In truth, in the truest sense of technically, his lawyers didn’t request a jury trial. At least, they never did so on paper.
When the AG’s office alerted the court and Trump’s lawyers that they were ready for trial, Trump’s defense team blew the 15-day deadline to respond, according to court records.
There are a few potential reasons Trump’s lawyers didn’t ultimately make the formal request. The one many armchair legal experts favor is that they simply forgot. That’s entirely possible, given their earlier statements in person that they wanted a jury trial, but it’s not the only scenario.
Another potential reason they didn’t request a jury is that they didn’t think it was worth the time. In this scenario, Trump’s lawyers made a calculation that they wouldn’t get a jury, and that any time spent on the endeavor was hopeless. That’s certainly possible, given some of the explanations his team provided to The Daily Beast on Thursday.
But the third possible reason is more Machiavellian. His lawyers may have wanted to poison the well—appearing to get stuck with a judge they dislike, using the battle as a fundraising tactic and appealing every decision he makes to cast their lot with the appellate court.
In any scenario, the fact that Trump’s lawyers are the reason he didn’t get a jury trial should suck the air out of the former president’s breathless complaints.
What’s even more damning for the legal team is that Trump may have actually gotten a jury if his lawyers had asked in a timely manner.
The Daily Beast reviewed court records and pulled New York case law to paint a fuller picture of an issue that has dogged the trial since it began on Monday—particularly since Engoron’s decisions have already weighed so heavily on the future of Trump’s real estate empire. Before the trial even started, the judge concluded the former president routinely lied to banks by inflating the values of his many properties. The judge has already decided Trump’s corporations should lose their business licenses. It’s been obvious from the start that Trump is going to receive a legal lashing over the next three months.
But it wasn’t always obvious that Trump was doomed.
The question of a jury trial first came up during a Friday morning court hearing on March 3, when Engoron said he wanted to get a sense of whether either side wanted him to try the case alone or with the help of a jury. By that point, he’d already mediated much of the bickering during the investigation stage between the AG’s office and the Trumps, increasingly forcing the family to comply with subpoenas. Engoron had also already been on the receiving end of a defense effort to remove him from the case.
In other words, they had a history.
AG senior litigation counsel Kevin Wallace indicated that state rules would likely make this a bench trial, but even he didn’t seem completely sure. The judge actually pushed back on that, appearing open to the idea of having an odd sort of split trial, in which jurors might decide the facts and he would decide on the appropriate remedies.
Engoron left the door open to Habba (who represents Trump) and Clifford Robert (who’s defending Don Jr. and Eric Trump).
“What kind of trial will this be?” he asked. Habba was clear about her preferences—and even hinted at possible public perception that consolidating so much control in the judge might appear unfair.
“Your Honor, we would prefer to have a jury trial. I think that would, frankly, alleviate a lot of our concerns in terms of any impartiality,” she said. “So, I think, for us to feel comfortable that justice is served appropriately, that it is being heard with a fair and open mind, that somebody who, maybe, hasn’t been part of the special proceeding, our preference is, obviously, a jury trial.”
“And you want a jury trial for every issue, the whole trial?” Engoron responded.
“I would be open, Your Honor, to discussing what you think is fit,” she responded. “Obviously, I would defer to what you find appropriate, but we would like to have a jury trial, at least, I should say, for my clients, for Donald Trump, the Trump Organization entities and the other defendants.”
After checking in again with Wallace, the judge left it up in the air.
“We don’t have to decide today, and we won’t,” he said.
But when it actually came time for a decision to be made, Trump’s legal team remained conspicuously silent. New York state court rules say when one side of a lawsuit alerts the court that the document-sharing discovery phase of a case is over by filing something called a “note of issue,” the other side has 15 days to demand a jury trial.
The AG’s office filed that on July 31, checking off a box that requests, “trial without jury.” But as the days went by, Trump’s lawyers simply didn’t respond. In fact, the next time defense lawyers filed anything in the case was more than a week after the deadline—on a totally unrelated matter about insurance documents.
Their inaction left it up to the judge, who sided with the only one who spoke up: the AG’s office.
Fast-forward to this week, and Trump has been complaining everywhere about a situation his own team created.
“THIS IS A TOTAL WITCH HUNT, WHERE I AM NOT EVEN ALLOWED TO HAVE A JURY,” Trump posted on his Truth Social media network this week.
On Thursday afternoon, The Daily Beast caught up with members of Trump’s legal team on their way out of the Manhattan civil courthouse and asked why they didn’t file a response. Morian suggested the reason was the second theoretical scenario—that it wasn’t even worth trying, citing his decade-plus experience working these very types of cases.
“You’re not entitled to a jury trial under Executive Law 63 (12), full stop. It’s an equitable statute. There’s no jury trial right,” he said. “I’ve prosecuted cases for 13 years in the Attorney General’s Office using that statute and the Martin Act. You don’t get a jury trial under 63 (12), that’s the answer. It’s not up to the judge. You don’t get a jury trial.”
He was referring to the fact that, in this case, the AG’s office sought what’s called equitable relief, in which they want a court to compel the Trumps to do certain things—namely, pay up more than $250 million for lying about real estate evaluations and dissolve the many companies that own those properties.
As far back as 1947, a state judge in New York decided that “parties are not entitled to a jury trial as a matter of right” in these types of cases. However, in 1964, yet another state judge clarified that New York’s civil court rules permit an “advisory jury”—and it’s still up to the judge presiding over the case. Hence why Justice Engoron seemed open to the notion and left it up to lawyers.
Morian acknowledged that was an option, but called it a long shot.
“In the rarest cases, there may be issues of fact that may be triable to a jury. But those are extremely rare,” he said.
The Daily Beast asked if it wasn’t extremely rare to have a former president on trial.
Morian still stressed that victory on seeking a jury trial wasn’t guaranteed.
“You don’t have a right,” he said.
