Courts

Trump Held In Contempt Of Court, Sends His Lawyer Out To Sh*t Talk Judge, Not Yet Tired Of Winning

Interesting strategy.

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(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

On Friday, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron refused to purge the contempt charge against Donald Trump for failing to conduct a diligent search for documents responsive to a December 2021 subpoena from the Office of the Attorney General (OAG).

On Monday, the court hosted a status conference to consider the OAG’s request for contempt after Trump agreed to comply with the subpoena in both a March 3 stipulation and subsequent correspondence with the OAG, but instead produced a series of objections to the request.

After the OAG moved to hold Trump in contempt, his attorney Alina Habba magicked up 16 pages of gobbledygook pinky swearing that she’d conducted a diligent search, but the court wasn’t having it.

“Boilerplate doesn’t cut it,” Justice Engoron told Habba in court Monday, following up later that afternoon with a written order finding that the former president “willfully disobeyed a lawful order of this court” and should be assessed a $10,000 daily fine until he complied with discovery.

On Wednesday, Habba docketed a slightly less pro forma set of affidavits, even going so far as to get Donald Trump himself to put his name on a couple of sentences attesting that he didn’t have any responsive documents in his possession, accompanied by a demand that the court purge the contempt finding. But the OAG argued that this was still insufficient, since, among other things, the affidavit relied on searches conducted prior to December 2021, when the scope of the investigation was expanded to include the property at 40 Wall Street and the appraisal of it by Cushman & Wakefield.

And at a hearing on Friday, Justice Engoron agreed.

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“The affirmations submitted by counsel for Mr. Trump are insufficient in that they fail to specify who searched for each respective request, at what time, where, and using what search protocols; it is not sufficient simply to attach a list of people who participated in the searches. Moreover, the affirmations submitted by counsel also fail to affirm that the subject electronic devices were imaged and searched and with what search terms,” he wrote in order refusing to purge the contempt.

Characterizing Trump’s personal affidavit as “completely devoid of any useful detail,” the court instructed him to submit a more detailed account of his search, in accordance with New York law.

Indeed, it was a very bad week in New York court all ways round for Trump. On Wednesday, the court granted the OAG’s motion to compel Cushman & Wakefield (C&W) to comply with subpoenas for documents and added the appraisers as respondents in the case. As we noted previously, C&W suddenly clammed up when Tish James started asking questions about how the company decided that the value of 40 Wall Street had doubled between 2012 and 2015, particularly when it was charging rents 10-17 percent below market rate in the area.

In a Wednesday order, Justice Engoron found that the OAG’s subpoena was reasonable and refused to entertain the argument that compliance would violate C&W’s duties to its other clients. Worse still, he suggested that the OAG had reason to suspect that “there was a pattern and practice at C&W of failing to adhere to its internal quality control practices,  writing that “This court has reviewed numerous documents in camera demonstrating that C&W was not consistent in adhering to its internal quality control practices when conducting appraisals on behalf of the Trump Organization.”

All in all, it was not a great look. And speaking of not a great look, Habba continued her usual pattern of good judgment and discretion by immediately emailing Law & Crime to tell them what she thought of Justice Engoron.

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“The tactics employed by this Court, including the dramatic pounding of the gavel, the statements directed to our client from the bench, and direct comments to the press have reduced this hearing to the likes of a public spectacle. We will zealously prosecute our appeal of the Court’s improper application of both law and fact,” she huffed.

Just tweet through it, counselor, you’re doing great.

‘Mr. Trump Has Not Yet Purged His Contempt’: Manhattan Judge Won’t Nix Fine of $10,000 per Day for Flouting New York AG Subpoenas [Law & Crime]
People of the State of New York v. Trump Organization, Inc. [Docket 451685/2020 available via NY Courts]

Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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