An appeals court Thursday rejected Donald Trump’s bid to delay a civil trial in a lawsuit brought by New York’s attorney general, allowing the case to proceed days after a judge ruled the former president committed years of fraud and stripped him of some companies as punishment.The decision, by the state’s intermediate appellate court, clears the way for Judge Arthur Engoron to preside over a non-jury trial starting Monday in Manhattan in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil lawsuit.
In New York “these cases take many years to get to trial,” Trump wrote Wednesday in a post on his Truth Social platform that appeared to conflate several of his legal foes. “My Political Witch Hunt case is actually scheduled to start on Monday. Nobody can believe it? This is a ‘Railroading’ job, pushed hard by the Radical Left DOJ for purposing Election Interference.
They filed the lawsuit under a provision known as Article 78, which allows challenges to some judicial decisions, and asked that the trial be postponed until that matter was resolved. Trump’s lawyers, in a letter to the appeals court, said Engoron’s 35-page decision showed he remained intent on defying the appeals court by ignoring the statute of limitations issue. Engoron refused to dismiss any claims and based his fraud ruling partly on stale allegations that should’ve been thrown out, Trump lawyer Clifford Robert wrote.Engoron’s fraud ruling resolved the key claim in James’ lawsuit, but six others remain.