(DCNF)—Longtime Democrat operative Julian Epstein appeared on Fox News Friday and blasted Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James’ decision to appeal a ruling that overturned a $454 million civil fraud judgment against President Donald Trump.
James formally notified the court Thursday that she will appeal last month’s ruling tossing Trump’s $454 million civil fraud penalty, aiming to reinstate both the fine and the fraud finding against him and his company. In an appearance on “The Evening Edit,” Epstein said the case was politically motivated and fundamentally flawed.
“It’s the same reaction that I’ve had with most of Letitia’s James’ antics and her pursuit of Trump. It’s doubling down on dumb,” Epstein said. “[In] the case in the appeals court in New York in August, you had mostly liberal Democratic appointed judges who all said that the judgment was way out of whack, that it was an Eighth Amendment violation.”
Epstein said James’ action was an abusive and political prosecution from the start.
“The notion that you have half a billion-dollar fine when all of the affected parties in the case from Deutsche Bank on down said that there was no harm. This was an abusive prosecution. It was a political prosecution. The whole thing, in my view, should be thrown out. And she will not prevail,” Epstein said.
James sued Trump in 2022, accusing him of inflating property values to secure loans—an investigation she vowedduring her 2018 campaign, when she called him an “illegitimate president.” In 2024, Judge Arthur Engoron barred Trump from serving as an officer or director of any New York-based company for three years and ordered him to pay the full penalty plus interest.
A New York appeals court ruled in August that Engoron’s civil penalty against Trump violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on excessive fines.
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