Donald Trump Shambles Out Of Court. Twice.

// Donald Trump will never give up. He will never surrender. He will, however, run away and hide out at his golf club rather than go under oath.

Last night, Trump filed a notice of voluntary dismissal in his schmefamation suit against his former lawyer Michael Cohen. Captioned as a breach of contract suit, Trump claimed damages of $500,074,000 for Cohen’s failure to adhere to New York Rules of Professional Conduct and for saying mean words about him on his podcast. The suit was filed in the Southern District of Florida, on the theory that Cohen’s book and podcast are available there, so … YOLO.

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If Trump was hoping to pull Judge Aileen Cannon, his gambit failed miserably, and the case was assigned to Judge Darrin Gayles, an Obama appointee. This apparently suited Cohen fine, though, and he didn’t bother raising the issue of personal jurisdiction. He simply moved to dismiss on the theory that Trump’s claims were time-barred and also hot garbage. Meanwhile discovery was ongoing, with Trump scheduled to testify Monday in New York after having postponed his deposition twice.

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But alas, it was not meant to be. Before Judge Gayles could rule on Cohen’s motion to dismiss, Trump faffed off to flog Melania’s Christmas tree ornaments and scream about New York Attorney General Letitia James on Truth Social. The case was dismissed without prejudice, and Trump insists he will refile it at some indeterminate future date.

“Once President Trump has prevailed in dealing with the witch hunts against him, he will continue to pursue his claims against Michael Cohen, who rightfully deserves to, and will be held accountable for his unlawful words and actions just as the Southern District of New York held him accountable for numerous non-Trump related acts and crimes, making Cohen a very ‘proud’ felon,” Trump’s spokesman babbled today.

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Trump also dropped the lawsuit he filed against New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron on September 20 in a desperate attempt to fend off this week’s civil fraud trial. The argument was that the trial must be postponed because of the court’s failure to rule on a statute of limitations issue. But in his grant of partial summary judgment to the state, Justice Engoron disposed of the SOL issue — and not in the way the defendant had hoped. The court also held that Trump and his company routinely submitted fraudulent financial statements and ordered the cancellation of its licenses to do business.

In the event, the First Judicial Department failed to swoop in and save Trump’s bacon, and the trial has been the raucous shitshow everyone had predicted. So now he’s abandoning his windmill tilt against Justice Engoron, too.

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Presumably he’ll get back to that one at a later date as well. Probably during infrastructure week. But it wasn’t all bad news for the former president, who got a reprieve from the portion of Justice Engoron’s order canceling his business licenses. It’s a temporary stay pending appeal, but a big win for Trump in an otherwise bleak week.

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.

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Arthur Engoron, Donald Trump, Government, Michael Cohen