In a particularly unhinged rant Friday, former President Donald Trump accused a New York judge of being part of a “Communist takeover” of his Trump Organization.
What State Supreme Court Arthur Engoron is actually doing is making decisions concerning a lawsuit filed against Trump and his three eldest children for $250 million over the alleged use of inflated company financial statements to mislead lenders in obtaining loans.
The suit was filed last month by New York Attorney General Letitia James (whom Trump always insists on calling “Peekaboo”). James’ office has asked Engoron for “an expedited preliminary conference” to quickly schedule the trial for next year, arguing that the Trumps are engaged in an “ongoing” fraud.
James is seeking to prevent the Trumps in the interim from conducting business in the state and to curtail their access to loans.
“The statements of financial condition” concerning Trump assets were “greatly exaggerated, grossly inflated, objectively false, and therefore fraudulent and illegal,” James told reporters when she announced the filing of the suit.
“Claiming money that you do not have does not amount to the ‘Art of the Deal,’” she added, referring to the title of Trump’s ghost-written book. “It’s the Art of the Steal.”
Trump and his attorneys tried — and failed — to get Engoron bounced from the case. Engoron earlier this year had held Trump in contempt of court for failure to turn over documents demanded by James.
Engoron is “vicious, biased and [a] mean ‘rubber stamp’ for the Communist takeover of the great & prosperous American company that I have built over a long period of years,” Trump claimed Friday on Truth Social.
