Free Republic

A judge on Thursday issued a furious order targeting a Chinese billionaire and ally of Steve Bannon, a member of Donald Trump’s inner circle, ordering him to either pay $134m or face arrest for his violation of a previous court order. In a ruling, a judge from the New York County Supreme Court excoriated Guo Wengui for hiding billions of dollars’ worth of assets around the US and elsewhere including in the form of a superyacht named the Lady May. Judge Barry Ostrager faulted Mr Guo in his ruling for hiding the craft outside of US jurisdiction in the Bahamas...

It seems the prosecutors feared it would just be too humiliating to admit they had nothing, and hoped they’d somehow stumble on . . . something. Still, Thursday’s final retreat, dropping most charges at the very end, was a shocker. It left the judge dismissing those charges “with prejudice,” so the state can never refile them. And Exxon’s infuriated lawyers say those claims “have cost in many respects the most severe reputation harm to the company and to the executives,” so they want still stronger sanctions. Judge Ostrager has 30 days to issue a decision. The prosecutors are surely praying he’ll find...

Last Thursday, in a move that surprised everyone but perhaps shouldn’t have come as a surprise at all, New York State Attorney General Tish James withdrew two counts of fraud against ExxonMobil during her closing arguments in the flimsy case she and her predecessor, Eric Schneiderman, spent the last half-decade pursuing against the energy giant. Tellingly, AG James dismissed the two of her original fraud counts that were based on laws requiring demonstration of actual harm in order to obtain a positive judgment. Her suit claimed that ExxonMobil’s alleged “fraud” of keeping two separate estimates of the future costs of...