Trump battled a fraud lawsuit in New York that could determine his future as a businessman with a torrent of insults and taunts… and no coherent legal strategy.

Former President Donald Trump wrapped up his massive civil fraud case with a trademark personal touch: An attack on the judge, right in the courtroom.

“You have your own agenda,” Trump told Judge Arthur Engoron Thursday. “You can’t listen for more than one minute.”

And with that, the trial was over. Now, it’s the judge’s turn.

The man Trump just spent months taunting and insulting will now deliver a judgement within weeks that could wallop Trump’s business empire, with hundreds of millions in fines, a possible lifetime ban on doing business in New York, and possibly other penalties. This case could force Trump to hand over flagship New York properties, including even his Trump Tower headquarters in Manhattan. Trump, who spent a lifetime buffing his preferred self-image as the ultimate brash New York real estate tycoon, may shortly be banned from working in the Big Apple ever again.

With so much at stake, Trump’s decision to repeatedly insult the man with so much power over his fate was an unorthodox choice, to say the least.

      • mattw3496
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        1610 months ago

        Even as someone against the death penalty, hard disagree. Sometimes when a bastard fascist shows you their colors…

        • @[email protected]
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          910 months ago

          Look, I know that France can be an isolating place even if you are wearing a French hat, but they do have some spicy ideas about how to handle certain problems.

          • Flying Squid
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            410 months ago

            Until those ideas lead to an Emperor that tries to take over Europe.

            • @Maggoty
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              610 months ago

              People don’t understand. They think of the romanticized version where a bunch of rich people got killed. They don’t understand it was an entire civil war featuring mass murder of civilians from all levels of society.

              • @[email protected]
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                210 months ago

                Lack of education. I am not French but learned about this in school. History is important so we don’t repeat mistakes from the past.

                Some may think whatever happened some 250 years ago in France is irrelevant. I’ll use this quote from the Wikipedia article to illustrate (keep in mind the estimated number of victims is even higher) :

                “During the Reign of Terror, at least 300,000 suspects were arrested; 17,000 were officially executed, and perhaps 10,000 died in prison or without trial.”

                That’s a little over 1% of the population (about 28 million) arrested and 0,06% executed. In the US today this would equal to 3.320.000 arrested and 199.200 executed.

                And what worries me even more is there are people who look at this and think it’s fine.

                • @Maggoty
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                  110 months ago

                  They think it’s fine because they think they’ll be on the winning side.

                  • @[email protected]
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                    210 months ago

                    Which is funny considering the main figure of the Reign of Terror himself ended up losing his head in 1794.

    • @jordanlundM
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      310 months ago

      I get the level of ridiculousness, but advocating violence is advocating violence. Removed.