and then that that was canceled. i think that was a good choice by the defense. you don t want to call the most antagonistic witness at the end of your case. you want to leave the judge with a good impression, and i think some of the witnesses they called may have chipped away or dug themselves somewhat out of the hole. i m mixing all my metaphors, but i think you know where i m going o . i do that all the time. i m glad i m not the only one. i m glad you brought that up, though, it was interesting that donald trump, don jr., eric, ivanka, they were actually witnesses called by the attorney general s office as they were presenting their case, barbara. do you think the a.g. s office made a strong enough case to warrant a maximum penalty here, or are there any loose ends they need to tie up today? well, i think one of their goals today will be to summarize and to try to provide for the judge an accounting for those numbers to show how they get to that math. but yes, i think they did
organization. they have already been found lie blg by the judge on one of the seven causes of action here, so the penalties the trump organization is facing here, the a.g. is asking for $370 million and more important is the cancellation of the trump organization s business certificates here in new york. if that happens they re literally out of business. that s what s at stake here. a couple things, the fact this is going to be decide by one judge. trump s team didn t argue to get a jury. they might have had a shot at that. also, is there a bit of room here for appeal, at least on the second part of it, that maybe it s overreach by the a.g. s office to completely wipe out the ability for trump org, if found liable and guilty here, to do business in the state at all? very important to keep in mind, no jury, this is a judge. the judge is the one, we already know where he stands, but the are still several counts outstanding, and then there s the question of what will the penalty be. d
he is sort of the crucified messiah, sitting there in the courthouse. he doesn t have to be there. he s fund-raising off it. it basically is proof to his supporters that people like letitia james, the a.g. in new york, are out to get him. so it works very well. he doesn t have to be in iowa. it s very cold there, as you know. you were just there. so yeah, this is good. i guess he came out at some point and was speaking before reporters and going at the attorney general again, who makes a really great foil, right, because she s a black woman, she s a new yorker, she makes a great foil for donald trump. it s a classic trump era collective action problem. this is also really good for letitia james. it was great for alvin bragg to bring a case i didn t think should be brought. their incentives are being rewarded by doing things against trump that also reward trump, but also elevate him and are bad for the country in general. such a good point.
if you re betting, the odds are that he s going to side with the attorney general. the best evidence of that is that he already did so in his opinion granting summary judgment to the attorney general. he essentially goes into this case already half deciding it for the a.g. now, over the course of the last couple of months, could the defense have chipped away at this? did justice engoron keep an open mind? i m sure he did. and if there was some compelling evidence, for example, the expert i just mentioned, the deutsche bank executives, did that have an effect on the judge. and i think he probably especially given the high profile nature of this trial, probably extra committed himself to being as impartial as he could, once and that s after donald trump had left the courthouse, intentioned had died down because, look, like i said earlier, the best part of the case for the defense was not donald trump. all he it was antagonize the judge. i think you remember there was this talk he mig
matter of the record. that is a fundamental difference between what was in 2020 and 2016. we ve repeatedly referred pointing the finger at president biden for putting his hand on the scale, but if trump becomes the republican nominee, how does biden attack him while simultaneously seeming as though he s not involved at all in the justice department and their proceedings? it s no accident that you haven t heard joe biden coming out and talking about this case a great deal. he is deliberately not putting his finger, is thumbprint, on the scale in a public way. he knows that would be a disaster. for one thing, when the cases he s made is that he s not going to interfere in the justice department the way donald trump has. from his perspective, he s happy to let the process play out on its own. it seems to be working out pretty well to the biden campaign s advantage. this could be very expensive, you have the a.g. wanting $370 million in return profits. it s called disgorgement beca