Judge Engoron won't step down from Donald Trump civil fraud case

NEW YORK — The judge presiding over Donald Trump’s civil fraud lawsuit on Thursday categorically rejected the former president’s request that he step down based on allegations he improperly discussed the case with a lawyer in passing — saying the attorney in question “accosted and started haranguing” him at the courthouse.

State Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron said he was “supremely confident” in his ability to serve impartially and that the real estate attorney, Adam Bailey, who is not involved in the Trump case, boasted on TV about an interaction in February that he viewed very differently.

“[At] the end of the business day, I left my robing room in the courthouse at 60 Centre Street and rode an elevator down to the main floor. There, on the outskirts of the famous rotunda, Bailey accosted and started haranguing me about [the New York law Trump was found liable for violating]. He did not relay any alleged facts,” Engoron wrote of the interaction that happened a few weeks before he found Trump liable for fraud.

“Prior to that time, I considered Bailey a professional acquaintance and a distant friend. His sudden appearance and vehement speech took me aback, and I simply told him that he was wrong. He trailed after me, still droning on, as I descended the Judge’s stairs to the street level. I entered my vehicle without saying another word (except, perhaps, ‘goodbye’) and departed.”

Engoron on Feb. 16 found Trump, his sons, Eric and Don Jr., and former executives Allen Weisselberg and Jeffrey McConney civilly liable for breaking multiple state laws — including by falsifying business records, issuing false financial statements, conspiring to commit insurance fraud, and other related offenses — by routinely exaggerating the value of properties like Trump Tower, 40 Wall St., and Mar-a-Lago, Fla., sometimes by billions of dollars.

He ordered Trump and his sons and associates to pay the state of New York around $464.6 million, growing by $112,000 in interest daily, with most of the sum owed by Trump. He temporarily barred the former president and his sons from running a New York company and permanently banned McConney and Weisselberg. Trump and his codefendants appealed the judgment earlier this week.

In an interview with NBC News after the stunning ruling, Bailey claimed he approached Engoron with advice about the law central to the case when they crossed paths at the lower Manhattan courthouse, claiming, “I really want him to get it right.”

In June, Trump’s defense team filed a motion seeking Engoron recuse himself based on Bailey’s claims, arguing the judge was “fundamentally incompatible with the responsibilities attendant to donning the black robe and sitting in judgment.”

Engoron said he had no doubt about his impartiality and that it was absurd to suggest he sought counsel from a random lawyer about a case he had presided over for over three years, calling the interaction a “nothingburger.”

“I certainly did not need a landlord-tenant lawyer ranting about it. I did not initiate, welcome, encourage, engage in, or learn from, much less enjoy, Bailey’s tirade. I did not base any part of any of my rulings on it, as Bailey has outlandishly, mistakenly, and defamatorily claimed,” the judge wrote.

“[It] is up to me and my conscience to determine whether this 90-second, unsolicited diatribe about a law with which I was fully familiar and in which I was fully immersed, by a non-party and non-expert who conveyed no facts, in any way affected my adjudication of a dispute over which I had presided for three and a half years, during which time I had already issued several dispositive decisions. I hereby definitively state that it did not.”

Attorneys for Trump did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment. Bailey could not be reached.

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