NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump has abandoned efforts to save a federal lawsuit against New York Attorney General Letitia James — the second time he has stopped legal action against her after a judge last week fined her and her attorney nearly $1 million for filing it. casual case.
Trump’s lawyers and James’ office agreed Tuesday to settle an appeal seeking to overturn a judge’s decision to dismiss the lawsuit. Trump, a Republican, sued James, a Democrat, in December 2021 in an effort to block him from investigating him and his business.
Trump sued James again after a September lawsuit alleging that he and his company, the Trump Organization, misled banks and others about the value of his assets, including a golf course and a hotel that bears his name, in a practice dubbed “The Art of Stealing” — a twist on the title. his book “The Art of the Deal.”
Trump dropped the lawsuit last week after a federal judge in Florida, Donald M. Middlebrooks, accused him of a “pattern of judicial abuse” of filing frivolous lawsuits for political purposes, including what he said were bogus lawsuits against Trump’s 2016 rival. Hillary Clinton and others.
James’ case against Trump is still pending. They want the judge to fine Trump $250 million and ban him from doing business in the country. The trial is scheduled for October.
“I am pleased that Donald Trump has rescinded the two pending actions against my office,” James said in a statement Tuesday. “As we have shown, we have a legitimate legal case against him and his organization, and we cannot be distracted or dissuaded from pursuing it.”
Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, said the appeal was “voluntarily withdrawn for strategic purposes.”
US District Judge Brenda Sannes dismissed Trump’s original lawsuit against New York’s attorney general in May 2022, allowing the civil investigation to continue. Sannes wrote at the time that case law prohibited federal judges from interfering in state-level investigations and that there was no evidence to support his claim that James was targeting him out of political enmity.
Trump’s second lawsuit since his resignation, filed in November, seeks to prevent James from overseeing the family trust that controls his company. Trump initially filed the case in state court in Florida, but later moved it to federal court.
Trump’s Florida complaint repeated some of the claims from the federal lawsuit dismissed against him, exasperating Middlebrooks, who wrote in the December order: “This litigation has all the signs of being frivolous and frivolous.”
This week has seen many Trump-related legal developments.
On Monday, court officials said, the Trump Organization paid a $1.6 million penalty imposed as part of a tax fraud conviction last month in Manhattan for helping executives evade personal income taxes on lavish work benefits.
On Tuesday, a judge in Georgia heard arguments as they considered the public release of a special grand jury’s final report on an investigation into possible illegal interference in the 2020 presidential election by Trump and his allies. He said the report would remain private.