Trump fraud ruling adds to his string of legal losses in New York
CBS News, February 19, 2024
Donald Trump's latest
legal defeat in a New York court — a jaw-dropping $354 million judgment to claw back the proceeds of a decade of fraud, plus almost $100 million in interest — puts an exclamation point on an unprecedented losing streak in his home state.
Trump and his company have been winless in a series of costly, cascading high-profile legal battles in New York in the last 14 months. It has been a reckoning without precedent, with judges and juries alike concluding that Trump and his company have engaged in illegal behavior for years.
Trump's losses have come in state and federal court, civil and criminal, in rulings by juries and judges. A total of 30 jurors in three cases have unanimously ruled against Trump or his company. One of those juries was composed of citizens from heavily Democratic Manhattan, but two came in federal court in the Southern District of New York, with a pool of jurors from more politically diverse suburbs and exurbs.
Trump frequently calls courts in New York "rigged," but his losing streak is "an indication of the strength of the cases" against him, not a reflection of bias, said Cardozo School of Law professor Alexander Reinert.
"That string of defeats is an indication of the unlawfulness of his conduct," Reinert said, adding that Trump acts like "he doesn't think the law really constrains him, and I think he needs to understand now that it does."
Former President Donald Trump and his company have been winless in a series of costly, cascading high-profile legal battles in New York in the last 14 months.
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