Former President Donald Trump’s legal team has requested a mistrial in the civil fraud case against him and his family, stemming from the business practices of his real estate firm, the Trump Organization, but legal experts told Newsweek that the motion is unlikely to be granted.
Trump, the GOP front-runner for the 2024 presidential election, is on trial in New York, where Judge Arthur Engoron is deciding the fate of his family business. Engoron has already found Trump, his adult sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and 10 of his companies liable for fraud after inflating the value of Trump’s assets. The trial is to decide damages that Trump will pay. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and called the case election interference.
Trump’s lawyers filed a motion for a mistrial on Wednesday, saying in court documents that “there can be no doubt of the public perception of bias in this case.”
Newsweek reached out to Trump’s lawyers and Engoron’s office via email for comment.
“It is roughly the same odds as Trump confessing…somewhere between unlikely and unimaginable,” legal analyst Jonathan Turley told Newsweek. “Many of us have criticized the underlying law, but it is like complaining about the weather. This is sweeping authority has been given to the courts under a law that does not require an actual loss by a bank or third party.”
When asked about the chance of Engoron granting a mistrial, legal analyst Alan Dershowitz told Newsweek: “Zero.”
Dave Aronberg, the state attorney for Palm Beach, Florida, told Newsweek: “Trump has no chance of a mistrial here. In addition, his chances of prevailing on appeal because of judicial bias are slim, because Judge Engoron has not stepped over the line, despite the occasional snarky comment. The fact that Judge Engoron continues to limit Trump’s gag order to court staff and allows himself to be subject to a torrent of verbal abuse shows that the judge is trying to be fair.”
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Trump’s lawyers claimed in the motion that Engoron posted links to news articles “disparaging” Trump and others in the case in a newsletter for alumni of Wheatley School, which Engoron attended.
Trump’s lawyers also claimed that Engoron gave his principal law clerk, Allison Greenfield, “unprecedented status and input” during the trial. According to the motion, Engoron would consult with his clerk or receive “contemporaneous written notes” from her before ruling on most issues.
The motion also claimed that Engoron restricted the speech of those who wished to comment on “perceived partisan bias” in the judge’s handling of the case. Trump was put on a limited gag order on October 3 after he shared a social media post of Greenfield posing with U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, and falsely claimed that she was Schumer’s girlfriend. Trump has been fined for breaking the gag order twice.
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Joyce Alene, who served as a U.S. attorney in former President Barack Obama’s administration, posted on X, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday: “Attacking a judge’s law clerk seems like a bad strategy for winning a case—or here, having a mistrial declared.”
