Justice Arthur Engoron was “definitely assisting” the opposing attorneys in espousing anti-Trump sentiments on Monday, former President Donald Trump’s lawyer and spokeswoman Alina Habba said during a Tuesday appearance on Breitbart News Daily, outlining the absurdities of the New York civil fraud case while discussing some of the drama around Trump’s testimony.
Trump testified at the New York County Supreme Court on Monday and had a back-and-forth with Justice Arthur Engoron, which went viral after the judge reportedly asked Trump’s counsel, “Can you control your client? This is not a political rally.”
Trump counsel Chris Kise reportedly responded, “You’re in control of the courtroom, not me.”
In another viral moment, Habba told Engoron he was there to “hear what he [Trump] has to say” after repeated interruptions.
“I’m not here to hear what he has to say. He’s here to answer questions,” Engoron retorted.
Discussing these events, Habba told Breitbart News Daily exactly what prompted that exchange, explaining that Trump was “trying to testify fully and accurately, and frankly, finally got the opportunity to explain on the stand under oath how ridiculous this whole thing is [and] how they’re just not understanding basic principles of real estate.”
“You put a lawyer who works for the government up against a 50-plus-year real estate tycoon, and they’re going to try and grill him on the ins and outs of loan documents, banking, and real estate, and it’s just not going to go well. Unfortunately, when the judge saw that, he would cut him off, you know when things weren’t going his way, he would cut him off. … Well, I stood up and said, ‘You have to hear what he has to say. You cannot continue to cut my client off.’ And he said, ‘I’m not here to hear what he has to say.’ I think that was the most telling of all things that happened with the judge yesterday,” Habba said, emphasizing that Trump was “100 percent on topic.”
The judge, she continued, simply “didn’t like that he [Trump] was explaining them away.”
“So he would cut them off. That’s exactly what happened. I mean, I was there. It was not a different topic. It was on topic. … He would explain how developers work — how you can change zoning, how you can work through things. … They just don’t understand basics, and I don’t blame them, you know, again, they’re AG attorneys, you know,” she said. “Their exposure to real life is limited, but it is what it is.”
“They just didn’t really think it through, and the judge was definitely assisting them in making their case by quieting my client,” she said, noting that she believes Engoron clearly enjoyed his time in the limelight.
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Further, Habba explained that the case was decided on summary judgment “before we even walked in the court.”
“That tells you how ridiculous this is, before he even heard a witness,” she said, explaining that it essentially means that “you’re guilty, for lack of better word, in a civil proceeding, that you committed the fraud.”
This “was already decided before we had a trial,” she said. “He determined it based on his own interpretation. That’s where that $18 million Mar-a-Lago thing is. … That’s how insane this is. We’re really not there to try and win. We’ve already lost. We’re now just trying to explain to the judge how wrong he was, but he doesn’t want to hear it,” she continued, noting that the banks are “paid in full.”
“The loans are paid off. The loans were paid with interest. They made money. There was truly no victim here,” she added, highlighting the worst-case scenario, in that the opposition is asking for disgorgement of profits in the sum of $250 million and “to dissolve the Trump organization and corporation.”
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
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