What’s the chances he gets this overturned on appeal? He mean he had bad council. He could use that and get a new trial?
Regardless, he’ll drag it out till well after he has died of old age. The american legal system literally cannot touch anyone with money or power… see Matt Gatez for many many examples.
Even if they do get a settlement, I doubt trump will ever have to pay most of it, just like we dont see Alex Jones paying any of the billion dollars he owes people either. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/us/politics/alex-jones-bankruptcy.html
IANAL, but Ineffective Assistance of Counsel is well known to be extremely difficult to pull off, and even more so in civil cases. And, as I understand it, Trump’s sole basis for asserting it would be that the paperwork to receive a jury trial wasn’t filed properly, which resulted in a bench trial. Given that the judge otherwise provided acceptable due process to Mr. Trump, and the case appears to have been decided on clearly established facts and relevant law, I find it hard to believe that an appeal would work here.
Flipping to a different angle: Lawyers constantly fuck up paperwork; if the system allowed paperwork goofs to trigger new trials, it would bog courts down and provide an attack vector for attorneys to take advantage of.
Alex Jones’ lawyer sent his entire phone’s data to the opposing counsel, and he didn’t get a new trial. Now if that’s not a bad lawyer, I don’t know what is.
I doubt trump will get a new trial. I’m not even sure there’s a decent lawyer left in the country that would work that idiot.
I was thinking them being morons and being fined because they kept using same defense even after judge said to stop.
The sad thing is that if he hadn’t drawn the spotlight on the org by getting elected and refusing to divest himself, he would likely still be getting away with it.
There’s a reason Republicans are hell bent on defending the IRS and the only other option isn’t putting up much of a fight…
Quite a lot. David Cay Johnston has a couple of good books on the subject:
Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich–and Cheat Everybody Else
Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill)
The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use “Plain English” to Rob You Blind
