If a New York state court does not eventually throw out the $464 million civil fraud judgment against former President Donald Trump as a textbook case of selective prosecution, the United States Supreme Court surely will. But those decisions won’t come until years from now. In the meantime, New York Attorney General Letitia James is doing grave harm to our democracy.
New York’s Executive Law § 63(12) was passed in 1956 to protect consumers from repeat fraudulent actors. The thinking was that an individual bilked out of $20 might not have an incentive to sue the fraudster because it wouldn’t be worth the time and expense of a private lawsuit. But a prosecutor could protect hundreds or thousands of consumers by prosecuting repeat offenders.
That is how the law has been used in New York for decades, with prosecutors bringing suit against businesses that defrauded unsophisticated consumers. Then along came James, who saw an opportunity to attack Trump for political reasons.
The power of Executive Law § 63(12) derives from the fact that prosecutors don’t have to prove a defendant intended to defraud anyone or that anyone was harmed by the defendant’s actions. All the prosecutor has to show is that a fraudulent act was committed while doing business in New York.
During 11 years of business with Deutsche Bank, Trump signed many loan applications that the trial judge considered fraudulent, including an estimate that his Manhattan penthouse was three times its actual size and that unfinished buildings were complete.