As former President Donald Trump’s myriad of legal battles continues, he has been clashing with various judges. That trend continued this week.
“Judge Arthur Engoron, the most overturned and stayed Judge in the State, and the Racist New York State Attorney General, the most corrupt & incompetent A.G. in the Country (Violent Crime Is Raging!), have FRAUDULENTLY Undervalued my properties, by many times, in order to make me look bad, and make the Judge’s original ridiculous finding of Fraud pass the ‘smell test,’ which it does not,” said Trump Saturday morning in a Truth Social rant.
Engoron ruled in September that Trump inflated the value of his assets and he authorized state Attorney General Letitia James to cancel certificates for companies that hold those assets. CNN reported Friday that the judge had also rejected Trump’s request for a mistrial. However, Trump did get a win when Judge David Friedman of the state’s intermediate appeals court issued a stay on Engoron’s gag order, “allowing the former president to speak freely about court staff while a longer appeals process plays out,” per the Associated Press.
That wasn’t the only gag order issued for Trump. In late October, U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan reinstated a different gag order that had been stayed. Her ruling was in regards to a federal case alleging that Trump conspired to overturn the 2020 election results.
Trump called her a “true Trump hater,” on social media after the reinstated the order.
Of course, those two cases are just two of several Trump faces as he continues his bid to be the 2024 GOP presidential candidate. He’s currently far in the lead as the Republican frontrunner even though he has skipped debates and as some of his legal challenges threaten to prevent him from appearing on ballots.
Another judge – Sarah B. Wallace of the Denver District Court – issued a ruling Friday that Trump would remain on the 2024 primary ballot. Her ruling rejected a lawsuit that argued that he is ineligible to hold office due to a Civil War-era insurrection clause. Still, Wallace did accept many of the plaintiff’s claims in her 102-page ruling, according to Colorado Newsline.
“The Court concludes … that Trump incited an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021 and therefore ‘engaged’ in insurrection within the meaning of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment,” Wallace wrote, per the outlet.
Earlier this week, a Michigan Court of Claims judge also ruled that former Trump could remain on Michigan’s presidential primary ballot next year. Judge James Robert Redford heard arguments last week on three lawsuits before issuing opinions Tuesday.
Trump faces even more legal hurdles before the GOP primary and the 2024 presidential election, and Audacy created a timeline of what’s to come as the campaign continues, available here. Despite these challenges, a recent poll found that Trump was pulling in front of current President Joe Biden (who he lost to in the 2020 election) in a head-to-head hypothetical matchup.