Trump Crushes New York’s $500M Sham

It was always a fraud case with no victims. No one lost money. No bank cried foul. No insurance company claimed they’d been swindled. Yet, for the last year, New York Attorney General Letitia James and Judge Arthur Engoron have tried to convince the world that Donald J. Trump—the most scrutinized businessman in America—was some kind of cartoon con man who needed to be fined half a billion dollars and run out of his home state.

On Thursday, the façade finally cracked. A five-judge panel of the New York Appellate Division’s First Department tossed out the more than $500 million penalty Engoron had imposed, humiliating James and stripping her of the political trophy she thought she could parade into 2024. It wasn’t just a legal victory for President Trump. It was a moral vindication and a long-overdue reminder that even in deep-blue New York, the Constitution still matters.

The Wall Street Journal reports the ruling was “sharply splintered,” but the result speaks louder than the hair-splitting: Engoron’s fantasy judgment was vacated. The panel, made up of judges who are not exactly card-carrying Republicans, understood the absurdity of a fine larger than many Fortune 500 companies’ annual profits, levied in a case where not a single financial in