Free Republic

A New York appellate court is raising questions regarding the penalty and the justification under which AG Letitia James brought the case.Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron ordered in February former President Donald Trump to pay an approximate $450 million penalty in a civil fraud case in which there were no victims. Now, a New York appellate court is raising questions regarding the “troubling” penalty and Attorney General Letitia James’ justification for bringing the case in the first place. James accused Trump of inflating his personal wealth to get better loan terms. Trump, for example, valued his Mar-a-Lago estate at...

Appeals judges in New York fielded multiple questions to the New York Attorney General’s Office on Sept. 26 indicating that they were skeptical of its application of an anti-fraud law to former President Donald Trump’s business practices.The questions came during oral arguments over Trump’s claims that the state Supreme Court erred in handling the civil fraud case, which resulted in a $489 million penalty for the former president.Trump’s attorney in the case, D. John Sauer, told a five-judge panel in the court’s appellate division that the judge and prosecutors flouted time limits on the claims involved. He noted that Attorney...

In New York, a panel of five judges at the Appellate Division, First Department heard arguments surrounding former President Donald Trump’s appeal, and the panel’s line of questioning seems to cast doubts on several core aspects of the state’s allegations. The judges raised probing questions about the use of a consumer fraud statute, the scale of the financial penalties pursued by the prosecutors, and the private nature of the transactions involved. These points echoed key defense arguments that, despite not prevailing at the initial lengthy trial, seem to hold substantial weight. Notably, Trump was not present at Thursday’s hearing. The...

Appeals court judges appeared to question the legitimacy of the civil fraud case against Donald Trump as the former president urged the court Thursday to overturn a judgment against him that has ballooned, with interest, to more than $478 million.In February, a Manhattan trial judge found that Trump and other defendants — including his adult sons, Don Jr. and Eric, along with several business associates — fraudulently inflated his net worth and the value of his real estate properties to obtain favorable rates from banks and insurers. The nearly half-billion-dollar penalty ordered by the trial judge initially threatened to trigger...

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. won two appeals Friday as he seeks to have his name removed from state ballots, delaying the expected first mailing of absentee ballots of the 2024 elections.In North Carolina, an appeals court said Kennedy should be removed from the ballot, a ruling that would require counties to reprint ballots which were expected to be mailed beginning Friday. It's unclear if that ruling, which reverses a lower court's denial Thursday, will be appealed. But it will at least temporarily delay the distribution of mail ballots.In Michigan, an appeals court agreed to remove Kennedy from the ballot as...

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey announced on Tuesday that he has obtained a court order that will force the current administration to take congressionally appropriated cash and use it to finish the border wall that was started by former President Donald Trump to prevent illegal immigrants from flooding into the United States. A press release from the Attorney General’s office features a statement by Bailey where he says, “The Biden Administration has failed to abide by the law to finish the construction of a wall along the southwest border. Joe Biden refuses to carry out his constitutionally mandated responsibilities, so...

A federal appeals court on Thursday temporarily blocked a key Biden administration student loan forgiveness and repayment plan. The order could have significant ramifications for millions of borrowers.. Joe Biden’s Saving on a Valuable Education plan is a new income-driven repayment program designed to provide affordable payments and multiple pathways to loan forgiveness. The Education Department unveiled the SAVE plan last year, and began implementing the program in phases. But several groups of Republican-led states filed two separate legal challenges this spring, arguing that the Biden administration exceeded the authority Congress provided. Thursday’s appeals court ruling is just the latest...

<p>July 18 (Reuters) - A federal appeals court on Thursday blocked President Joe Biden's administration from continuing to implement a new student debt relief plan designed to lower monthly payments for millions of Americans. The St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a request, opens new tab by seven Republican-led states to put on hold parts of the U.S. Department of Education's debt relief plan that had not already been blocked by a lower-court judge.</p>

ATLANTA (AP) — A Georgia appeals court on Wednesday agreed to review a lower court ruling allowing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to continue to prosecute the election interference case she brought against former President Donald Trump. The move seems likely to delay the case and is the second time in as many days that the former president has gotten a favorable ruling that could push any future trials beyond the November election, when he is expected to be the Republican nominee for president. A day earlier, the judge in his Florida classified documents case indefinitely postponed that trial...

A federal appeals court late Tuesday night put Texas’ controversial immigration law back on hold, hours after the Supreme Court had cleared the way for the state to begin enforcing the measure. In a brief order, a three-judge panel at the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to wipe away a previous ruling from a different panel that had temporarily put the law, which would allow state officials to arrest and detain people they suspect of entering the country illegally, into effect. The panel of judges that issued Tuesday night’s order is already set to hear arguments Wednesday...

We've got a courtroom curveball coming your way. A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., just made a ruling that might have ripple effects on over a hundred January 6 cases related to the Capitol attack in 2021. The three-judge panel took a close look at a lower court's decision to enhance a defendant's sentence due to "substantial interference with the administration of justice" during the Capitol attack. The catch? The appeals court deemed that the term "administration of justice" doesn't cover Congress's role in the electoral certification process. Translation: the enhanced sentences might not be on solid legal ground....

A New York appeals court upheld a prior ruling that struck down a New York City law giving local voting rights to nearly a million foreign nationals. As Breitbart News chronicled, Democrats on the 51-member New York City Council approved a plan in January 2022 that gave more than 800,000 foreign nationals with green cards, visas, and work permits the opportunity to vote in citywide elections so long as they have resided in the city for at least 30 consecutive days. Black New Yorkers, along with naturalized American citizens, the New York State Republican Party, the Republican National Committee (RNC),...

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A federal appeals court must decide if Pennsylvania voters need to put accurate handwritten dates on the outside envelopes of their mail-in ballots for the votes to count, a dispute with implications for this year’s presidential contest. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held oral arguments in Philadelphia Tuesday over a district judge’s ruling in November that even without the proper dates, mail-in ballots should be counted if they are received in time. Ari Savitzky, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union representing several voter groups, told the court that more than 10,000 ballots in...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Washington’s federal appeals court on Tuesday rejected Donald Trump’s request to reconsider a gag order restricting the former president’s speech in the case charging him with plotting to overturn the 2020 election. Lawyers for the Republican presidential primary front-runner had asked the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to examine the gag order after a three-judge panel upheld but narrowed the restrictions on his speech. Trump can now appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The gag order was imposed by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in October in response to concerns from special counsel...

Second Amendment advocates won a big victory on Monday as the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Colorado’s law forbidding gun sales to adults under the age of 21 cannot be enforced while the measure is being challenged in court, rejecting an appeal by Gov. Jared Polis, who was seeking to enforce the prohibition. Back on August 7th, just a day before the new law was set to take effect, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction requested by Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, but Polis quickly appealed that decision. In their brief two-page order, appellate judges Carolyn McHugh and...

A federal appeals court on Friday ordered a new sentence for a North Carolina man who pleaded guilty to a petty offense in the Capitol riot — a ruling that could impact dozens of low-level cases in the massive Jan. 6, 2021 prosecution. The appeals court in Washington said James Little was wrongly sentenced for his conviction on a misdemeanor offense to both prison time and probation, which is court-ordered monitoring of defendants who are not behind bars. Little, who entered the Capitol but didn't join in any destruction or violence, pleaded guilty in 2021 to a charge that carries...

The Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati on Thursday affirmed a lower court’s ruling that the vaccine mandate for federal contract workers is unconstitutional. The majority opinion stated that a broad interpretation of the mandate could provide the president “nearly unlimited authority to introduce requirements into federal contracts.” The court said Biden wanted it “to ratify an exercise of proprietary authority that would permit him to unilaterally impose a healthcare decision on one-fifth of all employees in the United States. We decline to do so.” Judge Kurt Engelhardt, writing for the majority, demonstrated the fallacy of the government’s...

The 8th Circuit US Appeals Court blocked Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program on Friday afternoon. The court granted an emergency stay barring the discharge of any student debt until the court decides on a request for a longer-term injunction. Reuters reported: A U.S. appeals court on Friday temporarily blocked President Joe Biden’s plan to cancel billions of dollars in college student debt, one day after a judge dismissed a Republican-led lawsuit by six states challenging the loan-forgiveness program. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted an emergency stay barring the discharge of any student debt under the program...

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta just dealt former President Donald Trump and his legal team a serious setback as they authorized the DOJ to continue combing through classified records seized after FBI agents raided his Palm Beach, Florida home, Mar-a-Lago, in early August. The ruling reverses an earlier decision by Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who ruled in favor of Trump last week by allowing an independent arbiter known as a special master to review the documents before the DOJ could look at them.This new decision dramatically scales back the power of the special master and allows the...

Biden nominated Roopali Desai to the 9th Circuit Appeals Court.. ... serves on the board of a group that backed calls to defund the police and has called to abolish prisons. ... Desai serves on the board of Just Communities Arizona (JCA), a self-described "abolitionist organization" that envisions "a world in which prisons and jails are unnecessary." ... The organization has taken several radical stances on the criminal justice system, including claiming that "the criminal punishment system isn't really about justice" and mourning Arizona’s execution of Frank Atwood last month. Atwood was convicted in 1987 of raping and murdering 8-year-old...