(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Despite having the deck stacked against him in a New York civil trial in which state Attorney General Letitia James hopes to confiscate all his property for overvaluing collateral on loans he already paid back, former President Donald Trump drew encouragement from a possible legal safeguard involving the statute of limitations, the Daily Mail reported.
According to Trump, who has been accused over inflating his property values by $2.2 billion, 80% of the $250 million in charges will be tossed because the statute of limitations has expired.
The revelation coming from an appellate court shortly before the trial’s start marked a rare silver lining in an otherwise tense day that saw the former president at times appearing to lash out against brazenly corrupt Judge Arthur Engoron as the judge mugged shamelessly for the MSNBC cameras during the trial.
Trump suggested that Engoron’s behavior might be considered criminal after the leftist jurist wrongly undervalued his properties, including his Florida estate Mar-a-Lago, in order to unilaterally issue a fraud finding last week against Trump and his family-run corporation.
“A discrepancy of this order of magnitude, by a real estate developer sizing up his own living space of decades, can only be considered fraud,” Engoron wrote last month, noting that Trump and his allies have demonstrated the “propensity to engage in persistent fraud.”
But Engoron did side with Trump a few times during the trial’s opening day on Monday, including an acknowledgement of the appellate court’s verdict regarding the statute of limitations.
The judge slammed prosecutors for continually bringing up Trump’s financial situation prior to the time period of concern, despite Engoron’s orders to focus on 2014 and later.
“I trust that you can relate the 2011 documents to something that happened later,”
Engoron told the prosecution. “Or this has all been a waste of time.”
Trump praised the acknowledgement as one of the first instances of fair treatment he has received in the entire lawfare process.
“The judge’s last statement was very fair,” Trump said, after previously calling the Obama-appointed Engoron a Democratic operative and accused him of being engaged in “political lawfare and a witch hunt at a level never seen before.”
According to Trump, Engoron’s interjection was both unexpected and welcome.
“The way I interpret that … the statute of limitations is a very real thing in this country and that would kick out 80 per cent of this case would be over,” Trump said, continuing to call it a “big big” surprise.
“I greatly respect that,’ Trump added.
The former president’s lawyers agreed with Engoron’s statement, and Trump himself gave a thumbs up in court.
In any case, if Engoron is not tossing the majority of the case, he at least recognized a prior decision made by an appeals court regarding Trump’s property valuations.
In addition to outside judicial intervention, Trump also suggested he had something else working for him during the trial—and throughout his constant ordeal of lawfare attacks, which also includes 91 counts of criminal indictment in four other trials scheduled between now and Election Day 2024.
Trump retruthed what appeared to be a courtroom drawing that showed Jesus Christ seated next to him. The original post, which was tweeted by conservative influencer Dom Lucre, said “This is the most accurate courtroom sketch of all time. Because nobody could have made it this far alone.”
🔥🚨BREAKING: President Trump just posted me on Truth Social! pic.twitter.com/CdQWdtFJUl
— Dom Lucre | Breaker of Narratives (@dom_lucre) October 2, 2023
