On his knock-off social media site Truth Social, former President Donald Trump was openly expressing fear this Friday of asset seizure amid the fallout from a fraud case brought by New York state Attorney General Letitia James.
James successfully alleged a years-long pattern of business fraud hinging on the misrepresentation of various assets’ value. Trial Judge Arthur Engoron subsequently imposed financial penalties on Trump that, when including interest, approach half a billion dollars, and Trump has been struggling against the subsequent demand for a bond covering those penalties to stave off collections while he pursues appeals. Asset seizure is a possibility, and state authorities already filed the judgment against Trump with local authorities in Westchester County, which is just north of New York City — and which would allow the pursuit of a seizure of Trump’s property there known as Seven Springs.
That procedural step was also already completed in New York City, where a series of Trump’s high-profile properties sit.
“So one Corrupt, Radical Left Judge in New York, a Trump hater a the highest level, can disobey and laugh at the Appellate Division Ruling that gives me victory, and confiscate New York property from me that took a lifetime of hard work to accumulate and build?” Trump wrote Friday. “It sounds like COMMUNISM to me! THERE SHOULD BE NO FINE, I DID NOTHING WRONG. RELEASE THE GAG ORDER ENGORON!”
Trump is referring not to established facts of the judge’s response to those higher-level judicial decisions but just to the arguments of his own team. Trump’s frenzy aside, Engoron didn’t just buck judicial directives from higher up. The point of contention to which Trump is seemingly referring involves the relevant statutes of limitations, which — pointing to decisions elsewhere in New York’s judiciary — Trump and his team argued should shut down broad swathes of the case.
And no, asset seizure is not communism. It’s an established practice in the U.S. judiciary.
