FILE – In this Thursday, June 18, 2020, file photo, President Donald Trump looks at his phone during a roundtable with governors on the reopening of America’s small businesses, in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
An appeals court on Friday denied Donald Trump’s request to pause his ongoing civil fraud trial in New York, just a week after the judge presiding over the matter found him liable for fraud and ordered his business holdings dissolved in the state.
The denial comes shortly after Trump dropped a lawsuit he brought against the same judge. That paperwork was filed unexpectedly on Thursday, the Daily Beast first reported. Trump originally sued New York State Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron in mid-September, a maneuver intended to stop the $250 million civil fraud case brought against him and his business holdings by New York Attorney General Letitia James last year.
But with proceedings well underway and now that he is looking down the barrel at what is expected to be a weekslong if not monthslong ordeal at the courthouse in lower Manhattan, the lawsuit against the judge is obsolete and his appellate hopes are dashed. Trump filed his appeal seeking to overturn Engoron’s finding that Trump, and several others who worked for the Trump Organization, committed serial fraud over several years. The appeal also pushed back against Engoron’s ruling that Trump be prohibited from doing business in the state.
