The fine+interest total of nearly half a billion does seem like voodoo accounting to me, especially since he would have to pay an unjust amount just for a bond fee in NY. Could Engoron have fined trump a hundred million or so for contempt?
From the summary of this decision made a little over five years ago and available to AG James and Judge Enron and sets the standards for all the courts in the country. Period. The 9 to 0 decision with Ruth Ginsburg writing the opinion states:
“The Eighth Amendment's Excessive Fines Clause is an incorporated protection applicable to the States under the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause. (Incorporation Doctrine)
The Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause incorporates and renders applicable to the States Bill of Rights protections “fundamental to our scheme of ordered liberty,” or deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition.”
If a Bill of Rights protection is incorporated, there is no daylight between the federal and state conduct it prohibits or requires.
The prohibition embodied in the Excessive Fines Clause carries forward protections found in sources from Magna Carta (1215) to the English Bill of Rights to state constitutions from the colonial era to the present day.
Protection against excessive fines has been a constant shield throughout Anglo-American history for good reason: Such fines undermine other liberties. They can be used, e.g., to retaliate against or chill the speech of political enemies. They can be employed, not in service of penal purposes, but as a source of revenue. The historical and logical case for concluding that the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the Excessive Fines Clause is indeed overwhelming.”