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Let’s be clear — the New York civil fraud trial against Donald Trump has been a disaster for the former president. He owes $450 million, has retired judge Barbara Jones all up in his business, and basically had to admit he isn’t as rich as he always pretends to be. But yesterday, the New York Appellate Division, First Department offered a stay of execution, reducing his bond from $464 million to $175 million. That’s bad news for those who wanted to watch the state of New York seize Trump’s assets before Easter, but this just lets Trump’s appeal move forward — by itself, it doesn’t change the amount of money the former president owes as a result of the case.
But Trump attorney Alina Habba won’t let that dour reality spoil one of the few bright spots in her representation. She appeared on Fox News last night crowing about how the reduction in bond was “humble pie” served to NY Attorney General Tish James.
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Habba: I hope she took a little piece of humble pie today because that was what was served to her. We’ll be serving a lot more of that in the next couple of years pic.twitter.com/0E7PqiQaWb
— Acyn (@Acyn) March 26, 2024
Now, I don’t want to diminish Habba’s expertise in humble pie — after all, she’s been eating a lot — no, a LOT of it recently. But come now, this is not it. This isn’t a victory on the merits for Trump. Yes, his appeal gets to go forward — however, that’s a dubious victory at best. In reality, all it likely means is the embarrassing spectacle of asset seizure gets delayed.
Don’t worry — we can wait for it.
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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @[email protected].