Former President Donald J. Trump now finds himself at the center of multiple high-stakes legal confrontations, with each case poised to dramatically shape the ex-president’s legacy and political future. Thumb the scales of justice, accusations of financial fraud, and a bevy of defamation charges, and no one gets a grotesque dark image of the man once at the very pinnacle of power.
It was only a week ago, after all, that E. Jean Carroll, a columnist who had accused Trump of sexual assault, won a major legal victory. “This is a great victory for every woman who stands up when she’s been knocked down,” Carroll said in a statement, completely unrelated to her suit and therefore underscoring the broader meaning of her win. Her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, drove home the same point: “The law applies to everyone in our country, even the rich, even the famous, even former presidents.”
The New York attorney general’s office, it appears, is still pursuing a case of civil fraud against the former president. Detail followed detail as Andrew Amer, attorney for the attorney general, described the charges and financial wrongdoings concerning many properties owned by Trump. Indeed, as the presentation was detailed, Amer cited manifest cases of inflated assets, an accusation that Judge Arthur Engoron took to be “obvious” in a summary judgment. Amer postulated that the evidence is overwhelming that Trump and his associates willfully misrepresented the values of properties to defraud financial report readers.
The exchanges in the courtroom were at times light-hearted. When Engoron asked how they could know that Trump Organization controller Jeffrey McConney was aware of the fraudulent valuations, Amer quipped, “Because he’s not an idiot,” which set the courtroom into laughter. But the seriousness of the accusations was plain as Amer said the attorney general’s office had proved its case with “overwhelming and conclusive” evidence.
On another legal front, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg brought 34 counts of falsifying business records against Trump for the pre-2016 presidential election hush money paid to a porn star. In relatively subdued filings compared to those in some outstanding cases, Bragg’s filing focused on the legal policy at stake in the case rather than the salacious details. This case adds another layer to the mounting legal pressures facing Trump.
The latest court victory by E. Jean Carroll, where a jury ordered that Trump must pay her over $83 million for defamatory statements, only worsens the former president’s legal issues. Carroll has pointed to using the money in any way that would specifically aggravate Trump, alluding to the opening of a fund for women sexually assaulted by him. Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, observed that Trump’s courtroom behavior was an apt précis for his case: “a bully who can’t follow the rules.”
As Trump pledges to appeal these judgments, the legal battles are far from finished. Kaplan sounded confident that they would be able to collect the damages awarded since Trump does own quite a few vast real estate holdings that could be liquidated to satisfy the award. The ongoing legal battles underscore the turbulence of Trump’s post-presidency life, in which every case takes on outsize potential to reshape perception and political fortune.