• elbucho@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Lowering the penalty doesn’t make it in any way appeal-proof. Appeals are based on the merits of the case, not the penalty awarded, unless that penalty is considered “egregious”. The standard for egregious is usually somewhere north of 10X what a reasonable judgment would be. So lowering it from $370 to $364M will not in any way have an effect on the “egregious penalty” portion. Additionally, he had ALREADY RULED that Trump’s businesses were to be dissolved, and then he later walked back that ruling. If you’re going to find that all of the officers of the Trump Organization knowingly and willfully committed fraud over the span of decades (which he did), then dissolving their businesses is a logical thing to do. And if he were anybody other than Donald fucking Trump, those businesses would still be ordered to be liquidated, and none of those officers would be allowed to have any role in the running of any company in NY for life. Those are reasonable rulings that would have been applied to anybody else. Doing what Engoron did is just some straight up pussy shit.