Judges in New York are criticizing both sides in Trump’s $450 million civil fraud appeal

Trump himself was not present at the hearing.

The 2024 Republican presidential candidate is appealing a ruling by New York Judge Arthur Engoron, who agreed with New York Attorney General Letitia James that he would pay hundreds of millions of dollars in damages for civil fraud and be barred from pursuing real estate activities in New York because of three years.

James accused Trump in 2022 of defrauding banks and investors by inflating his net worth by as much as $2.2 billion. He was sentenced in September 2023.

During Thursday’s hearing, Sauer reiterated many of the arguments Trump made during the fraud trial, saying the sentence should be thrown out because “no one was harmed” by his client’s claims of inflated assets and that James undermined her authority exceeded by “pretending there is no statute of limitations at all” in reaching its damage estimates, CBS News reported.

However, some judges peppered him with questions about whether Trump is trying to weaken the state’s authority to prosecute blatant and repeated cases of fraud.

Meanwhile, Vale defended the huge amount of the fine, saying the level of illegality committed by Trump and his company, The Trump Organization, was exceptional.

“While this is a large number, it is a large number for a number of reasons. Firstly, because there was a lot of fraud and illegality,” she said, according to CNN. “That’s a huge benefit that they’ve gotten from this behavior” of falsifying financial data as a means to obtain favorable bank rates.

At least some appeals court judges appeared willing to question the fairness of the sentence.

“There must be a limit to what the attorney general can do,” Judge Peter Moulton told Vale.

“How do we draw a line or put up some guardrails to know when the attorney general is operating within her broad sphere … or entering an area where she has no jurisdiction?” asked Associate Justice John Higgitt.