For at least the fifth time, former President Donald Trump on Monday lost an attempt to dismiss his civil fraud case through a maneuver seeking a directed verdict in his favor.
In tossing Trump’s latest challenge, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron reminded the former president that “a lie is still a lie.”
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Two of Trump’s experts in particular, Jason Flemmons and Eli Bartov, argued that valuations are inherently subjective, and Engoron sharply criticized their testimony exculpating Trump, his family members and business associates of wrongdoing.
“Bartov is a tenured professor, but all that his testimony proves is that for a million or so dollars, some experts will say whatever you want them to say,” Engoron wrote.
A research professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, Bartov conceded that he billed nearly $877,500 to Trump for his testimony, and he said that money came from the Trump Organization and Save America PAC, the former president’s primary fundraising vehicle.
But Engoron said that Bartov “lost all credibility” by claiming Trump’s financial statements were accurate in every respect, even though a pre-trial ruling established the “numerous obvious errors” that they had.
This shit is the exact problem with our adversarial expert witness system. This should not happen in a court.
“Expert witness” has forever been deemed a useless title to me after watching the Derek Chauvin trial. They had a medical professional, I forget his qualifications exactly, but I believe coroner adjacent, professor, and some medical board member of some sort. Anyway, he testified, under oath, that is was possible, even probable, that Floyd did not die from asphyxiation due to the officers knee and weight on his neck and back, but from carbon monoxide poisoning because he was prone near a running cars exhaust, outdoors.
You could absolutely tell this guy was lying through his teeth the entire time. He quoted misleading lab statistics, like o2 levels in blood, like it was conclusive evidence of carbon monoxide poisoning, yet reluctantly confirmed under cross examination that those were expected levels for someone who had been given CPR.
It felt filthy just listening to someone with zero integrity completely misrepresent basic medical fact so grossly, under oath, as a professor and some hospital medical group board member. Someone who you should be able to trust implicitly, who seemingly has been responsible for dictating hospital medical policy in some form.
After that, I understood that you can pay some asshole in any position to testify whatever the fuck you want to in court. To out right lie.
That kind of egregious lying should lead to an investigation of professional misconduct.
If there’s any counter-incentive to lying on the stand for money, if you’re able to allege that it’s your “opinion” as an expert.
John Yoo, Bush’s torture memo lawyer who gave the administrative legal advice backing every illegal thing they did, holds a chaired position at Berkeley, ffs.
Criminal misconduct like perjury?
Problem is that the burden of proof to prove that they don’t actually believe their testimony is basically impossible. You’d practically need a direct quote saying they intended to lie for their testimony. Even quotes of them saying the exact opposite before and after the trial, can easily be defended by simply saying “I changed my mind. My testimony was what I believed at the time”
That professor should lose his job for this shit
Yeah when you take the Obi Wan stance of, ‘what I told you was true, from a certain point of view’ in court, there should be some repercussions. Like we get there can be different points of view but if 9/10 people say one thing, that 1/10 person’s view probably shouldn’t count when figuring out the truth in court and is basically wasting time. Though I think this is up to the judge to decide so it was mostly a delay and seem like they have some sort of defense for his followers.
1/10 people were bribed to BS - the entire billionaire class, and their insurrectionist Republican party are built upon this foundation
“We’re going to win. We’re going to win so much.
We’re going to win so much, you’re going to be so sick and tired of winning, you’re going to come to me and go ‘Please, please, we can’t win anymore.’
You’ll say ‘Please, Mr. President, we beg you sir, we don’t want to win anymore. It’s too much. It’s not fair to everybody else.’” “And I’m going to say ‘I’m sorry, but we’re going to keep winning, winning, winning, We’re going to make America great again.”
How many times does he get to try this?
I mean it’s like dealing with a toddler. They said no, that means no.
It’s not going to change when you ask them again 375,000 times in a row.
If it goes up again the judge needs to grow some balls regardless of their gender and tell the lawyers that if you attempt to bring this action again to my court that you will be sanctioned and possibly disbarred.
It works on the incompetent rubes. Had an idiot on Facebook saying some shit like “80% of indictments were thrown out”. Not a motion to dismiss, but they had already been tossed out. Some quick google-fu only showed they tried to have evidence excluded for like 80% of the indictments due to statutes of limitations. They lost. The evidence was kept in. I might be getting some details wrong, but it was in no way a “win” for trump.
The loser has been radio silent since asking for a source. Usually he’s on top of it, posting like a dozen propaganda puff piece articles that are all the exact same article rehashed on different right wing “news” sites.
Frivolous lawsuits are actually rare. Much like most news, we only hear about the crazy shit, because it’s crazy shit.
Local AM radio lawyer talks about this a good deal. These lawyers are not bringing stupid shit before these judges, who they know and have to work with. Keep fucking around and they face sanctions and disbarment.
Trump’s lawyers do not seem to get this. I’m not saying the state bar should kick their ass for representing the man. But can we get a little more action here?
Any lawyer still with Donnie has given up on a legal career. They are going to be media personalities, either getting paid by the Left to tell anti-Trump stories or by the Right to keep on defending him by maligning the system.
So much losing
