Ex-federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner predicted on Saturday that former President Donald Trump’s New York legal team’s challenging start is not “going to get any better.”
Trump’s legal team appeared for a contentious hearing in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ case into the former president’s business dealings this week. During that hearing, Judge Arthur Engoron voiced frustration with what he viewed as Trump’s attorneys’ “borderline frivolous” arguments and warned that he would consider sanctions against the legal team.
The hearing is apart of James’ lawsuit alleging that Trump fraudulently inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to obtain benefits such as better bank loans and reduced tax bills between 2011 and 2021. The case is set to go to trial on October 2 and is one of several legal battles the former president is set to face in the coming months. Trump has denied any wrongdoing in the case, accusing James of targeting him for political purposes. Meanwhile, the former president is also a candidate in the 2024 Republican primary election, hoping to take on President Joe Biden next November.
Following the contentious hearing, Kirschner, an MSNBC legal analyst and frequent critic of Trump, offered a dire assessment for how the rest of this case may play out for the former president during an appearance on the network Saturday morning.
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“At every turn Judge Engoron was calling Trump’s defense attorneys out on their nonsense,” he said. “And I don’t think it is going to get any better for them moving forward.”
Kirschner added that he believes Engoron could find a partial summary judgement in favor of James’ case, meaning he could potentially make a determination on some of the accusations, rather than bring them to trial.
“He called those arguments ‘borderline frivolous.’ He was considering sanctions against Donald Trump’s attorney,” he said. “And I love this, because Trump’s attorney argued, with respect to Donald Trump inflating—grossly inflating—the value of his properties, his attorney said well, judge, he is a master at finding value in his properties where others do not. Translation, my client is a master in the art of deception. I don’t think that hearing went all that well for Trump.”
Newsweek reached out to Trump’s campaign for comment via email
Trump’s spokespersons have previously rejected Kirschner’s legal analysis, previously saying in a statement to Newsweek that Kirschner is “a notorious trafficker of wild conspiracy theories and dubious legal analysis” claiming he “has been shunned by the legal community at large.”
James is seeking a payment of up to $250 million, as well as for Trump and two of his children, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, to be barred from running business operations in the state of New York. The former president’s eldest daughter, Ivanka Trump, was dismissed from James’ lawsuit in June due to the statute of limitations for most of the allegations against her.