Former President Donald Trump’s legal team filed documents in court on Thursday seeking to have Judge Arthur Engoron thrown off the civil fraud case against Trump in New York after they discovered that he allegedly engaged in “prohibited communications” with an outside party about the case.
Trump’s lawyers are trying to get Engoron tossed off the case as they appeal his highly controversial ruling that Trump was guilty and needed to pay nearly half a billion dollars to the state.
In the court documents, Trump’s lawyers cited an interview that real estate lawyer Adam Bailey gave with a local NBC News affiliate in New York in which he claimed that he spoke to Engoron during the trial at the courthouse where it was taking place.
“I actually had the ability to speak to him three weeks ago,” Bailey said during the interview back in February, according to documents filed by Trump’s lawyers. “I saw him in the corner [at the courthouse] and I told my client, ‘I need to go.’ And I walked over and we started talking … I wanted him to know what I think and why…I really want him to get it right.”
Trump’s lawyers argued that the allegations were “fundamentally incompatible with the responsibilities attendant to donning the black robe and sitting in judgment.”
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“Specifically, this Court has been publicly accused of engaging in prohibited communications regarding the merits of this case, in clear violation of the Code and this Court’s solemn oath,” they said. “In sum, this Court appears to have proceeded not only in contravention of controlling law and the Constitution, but perhaps also contrary to the governing standards of judicial conduct. The gravity of these public allegations of potential misconduct is underscored by the fact that this Court, based upon public reporting, is also now apparently under investigation by the Commission on Judicial Conduct (the ‘Commission’).”
They said that the development creates at a minimum the “appearance of impropriety” and means that Engoron must be removed from the case.
