Letitia James in Wonderland

The motion of New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, to find President Trump liable for fraud sans trial reminds us of “Alice in Wonderland.” That’s where the Queen shouts “No! No! Sentence First — Verdict Afterwards.” To which Alice shouts, “Stuff and nonsense.” Before Ms. James made any investigation, she ran for office calling the 45th president “illegitimate.” Yet legitimacy is exactly what all the accouterments of due process are about.It is true that the summary judgment Ms. James seeks is only partial, on the first of seven counts. It is the crucial one, though — turning on whether Mr. Trump defrauded lenders, insurers, and others about the value of his assets. It is also true that civil cases differ from criminal ones. Ms. James wins by merely marshaling a preponderance of the evidence. The trial would be decided from the bench by Judge Arthur Engoron, not the jury box. The penalties New York seeks are significant, though. Ms. James’s “prayer for relief” would have Judge Engoron impose a $250 million fine on Mr. Trump, bar Mr. Trump and his business from entering into any New York State commercial real estate acquisitions for five years, and permanently ban him and his two sons “from serving as an officer or director in any New York corporation or similar business entity. Now comes Ms. James with the position that the substantive basis for these penalties — the end of Mr. Trump’s New York career, essentially — can be adduced without a trial, even a stripped down civil one. One defense that we are inclined to think deserves a hearing surfaces in Mr. Trump’s reply to New York— that the entities he is accused of defrauding “have never complained, and indeed have profited from their business dealings” with him.It could be that Mr. Trump is liable, just as it could be that juries will convict him in the four criminal cases that lay around the bend. It is possible, too, that voters will hand him the Republican nomination, or even the presidency again. The process, though, is the point, just as it was when the Trump Organization was convicted of criminal tax fraud in January. Ms. James wants another bite of that apple, post haste. While we are no jurist, we do know that the Constitution demands “due process of law” before the government deprives someone of “life, liberty, or property.” While Mr. Trump’s liberty is now the interest of Special Counsel Jack Smith and district attorneys Alvin Bragg and Fani Willis, his “property” is Ms. James’s concern. Its inclusion in the clause, though, means that the Framers did not intend due process to stop at one’s wallet. Ms. James cites a “mountain of undisputed evidence” for the proposition that the facts that prove Mr. Trump’s liability “are beyond dispute.” She has “no shred of doubt.” Others — this newspaper, among, and no doubt millions of others — do have doubts. Even if Mr. Trump is not required to be found liable beyond a reasonable doubt, he is still accorded the benefit of the doubt. Let her make her case, and let the facts be weighed, in open court.Otherwise New York’s case against the 45th president will only feed the doubts. We would have thought that this would be obvious even to Ms. James, who — we know by her political campaign — made up her mind about Mr. Trump even before she became New York’s attorney general. Absent a trial, with convincing evidence adduced in public, the suspicion of Americans — that justice has become political — will be stuff and nonsense, indeed.

Letitia James in Wonderland

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