Former President Donald Trump’s legal team filed documents in court on Thursday seeking to have Judge Arthur Engoron thrown off the civil fraud case against Trump in New York after they discovered that he allegedly engaged in “prohibited communications” with an outside party about the case.
Trump’s lawyers are trying to get Engoron tossed off the case as they appeal his highly controversial ruling that Trump was guilty and needed to pay nearly half a billion dollars to the state.
In the court documents, Trump’s lawyers cited an interview that real estate lawyer Adam Bailey gave with a local NBC News affiliate in New York in which he claimed that he spoke to Engoron during the trial at the courthouse where it was taking place.
“I actually had the ability to speak to him three weeks ago,” Bailey said during the interview back in February, according to documents filed by Trump’s lawyers.
“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.”
Trump’s lawyers argued that the allegations were “fundamentally incompatible with the responsibilities attendant to donning the black robe and sitting in judgment.”
“Specifically, this Court has been publicly accused of engaging in prohibited communications regarding the merits of this case, in clear violation of the Code and this Court’s solemn oath,” they said.
“In sum, this Court appears to have proceeded not only in contravention of controlling law and the Constitution, but perhaps also contrary to the governing standards of judicial conduct. The gravity of these public allegations of potential misconduct is underscored by the fact that this Court, based upon public reporting, is also now apparently under investigation by the Commission on Judicial Conduct (the ‘Commission’).”
They said that the development creates at a minimum the “appearance of impropriety” and means that Engoron must be removed from the case.
Get him thrown off the case? Not going to happen. Engoron could have stood up at the bench and shot Trump and nothing would happen to him. If Trump yelled in pain, Engoron would have then charged him with contempt of court for disrupting the decourm of the court.
Sure, look into the jerk After the damage is done! He should have been vetted before the trial!
The ugly scumbags law license should be taken away, The are plenty of scumbags like him these days that should get the same thing
They don’t get rid of their own! Biden and the Communist Dems have done so many bad things to the Trumps. They have broken laws and if anyone did this to another human being, they would be in jail. We know this man had no charges against Trump. So many other AGs and DAs have said they never would have tried Trump. There was no law broken. Still, no law was broken. Dem DA, DEM Judge (who gave to Biden’s Presidential election should have NEVER been on this case for that fact alone) in a city that is mostly DEMs tried a Republican running for office! NO one see this as a huge problem. Our Supreme Court should!