Letitia James faces a monumental legal setback as a New York appellate court overturns her $500 million fraud fine against Donald Trump, ruling it violated Eighth Amendment protections against excessive fines. While fraud charges remain under appeal, the host contrasts James's "venomous" prosecution with Trump's administration and highlights a concurrent Department of Justice investigation into James for alleged mortgage fraud involving misrepresented residency. Speculation mounts regarding political motivations behind these rulings, suggesting the media tide has turned against the attorney general amidst ongoing scrutiny of her conduct and potential retribution claims. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, Qwen/Qwen3-ForcedAligner-0.6B, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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The $500 Million Fine Revoked00:08:51
Wow, we talking about the day to get back to the office, right?
The day for me to come back to the studio.
We get hit with this one.
Whoa.
You know what?
I was just telling you guys the other day, it was time.
It was high time to throw out that $500 million fine that that one judge decided along with Letitia that they could get Trump for.
And sure enough, it's happening.
Oh my gosh, we get a lot to discuss.
And it's not over yet, by the way, because they haven't decided on the fraud charges and he's appealing those still.
But I mean, he's got to be. at least happy about this.
I thought it would come, but nonetheless, you know, talking about having that thing off your back, $500 million.
That was insane, actually totally, utterly insane.
And by the way, the court decided a violation of his Eighth Amendment rights.
Donald Trump seeing a victory here.
Letitia James seeing her little thing for $500 million getting thrown out of the appellate court in the state of New York, as we predicted it would right here on the Trish Regan Show.
Welcome back.
Good to have you guys here.
We're going to get into all of that.
Plus, another woke.
CEO goes bye-bye.
Okay, this is the Target guy, Brian Cornell.
I mean, their sales have just been plummeting and they went all in with the Pride stuff and the Tuckett swimsuits and you name it.
And guess what?
He's out of a gig.
And investors are happy about it.
Meanwhile, you got the cracker barrel CEO kind of getting out over her skis with her wokeness and she's reinventing the stores.
And well, investors don't really like that.
We'll talk about it.
Go woke, go broke.
You know the drill.
Also, Gavin Newsom under fire.
I mean, he just can't stop mimicking Donald Trump.
It's really weird.
It's as though gosh, it's as though somebody decided to take all his tweets and throw it into ChatGPT and have it spit out.
How would Donald Trump say this?
And however Donald Trump would say it, it's suddenly how Gavin Newsom would say it.
Woo!
Okay, Letitia, baby, it is over.
And guess what?
They're still coming for you on that mortgage fraud stuff.
Ed Martin taking a photo outside the Brownstone today, tweeting it with a big, giant smile.
He's the DOJ investigator looking into just exactly what went down with some of those properties.
Anyway, we're talking about a $500 million lien, basically, on Donald Trump that she had gotten in there.
along with the judge Arthur Andorin or however the heck you say the guy's name, whatever, whatever you want to call him, I'll tell you, he's no good.
He's no good because this was so perverse what they did.
And guess what else?
It was a total violation of the president's Eighth Amendment rights.
Yeah, there's this little thing called the Eighth Amendment because, you know, when we were trying to free ourselves from Great Britain back in the day, we didn't like what the royals would do when they would decide to dictate everything and they could take somebody down just because they didn't like your opinions.
They could make life really difficult vis-a-vis the fines, etc.
That's what Letitia James was doing, for goodness sakes.
That $500 million penalty against the former now president of the United States is gone, and she's kind of suffering a big setback.
I mean, this is fantastic.
For a woman who was just nonstop, right, out for blood, and then some who made it her mission every day to come into work and to campaign on getting Donald Trump, this is what you call justice.
He's called me venomous.
We will fight back to your attempt to bring Trumpism to New York City.
He's called me disgraceful.
Of the fact that they stumbled a Supreme Court seat.
He called me radical.
Listen, we know he's crazy.
We know he doesn't have a sound mind.
We know he's out of control.
He's called me a racist.
We've got to stand up to an administration which is too male, too Too pale and too So still.
Too male, too pale, and too stale.
Too male, too pale, and too stale.
I just gotta say, this is a great moment in time.
And I wanted to, you know, just jog your memory so that you know what he was up against.
A political animal who was willing, quite willing, to take everything he owned.
In fact, she told ABC News, ABC News, remember them?
Oh, they had to pay a fine.
Fined to the tune of what?
16 million dollars to the president.
They're now under investigation for FCC violations and Bob Beiger and the president of ABC NEWS and the rest of them all in all kinds of trouble.
But anyway, they were kind of taking Leticia's side, so it seemed.
I mean, anybody you know in the media was was doing this.
They were all on her side despite the fact that, like she was so over her skis in terms of the actual law, she wanted to actually take Trump Tower.
Let me remind you, four days after a judge ordered Donald Trump to pay 355 million dollars for a decade of fraud.
New York Attorney General Letitia James says she's prepared to do everything she can to make sure the former president pays his fine, including, she told us, seizing the buildings that bear his name.
If he does not have funds to pay off the judgment, then we will seek, you know, judgment enforcement mechanisms in court, and we will ask the judge to seize his assets.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Well, you can't actually do that.
Again, Letitia, because there is this thing called the Eighth Amendment, which if you paid attention in law school instead of politicking all the time, maybe you'd actually know about.
Yeah, the Eighth Amendment that doesn't allow you to just improperly go after people for these reasons.
This is what it came down to.
Total violation of the Eighth Amendment.
You had a five-member panel.
This is a picture coming to us courtesy of Fox, all upholding findings that Trump and his company were liable, affirming that James acted within her authority.
And that's vis-a-vis them saying, well, he inflated the square footage, et cetera.
We're going to get to that in a second because the fraud part, that still stands.
And he's appealing that.
And he's also, by the way, his DOJ is going after Letitia James for a violation of his civil rights, as well, by the way, her having committed some kind of fraud herself, because it seems that she did something, allegedly, that may have been far worse than anything she's trying to indicate he may have done.
Okay, because he inflated the square footage on something, which, again, like you can't do.
But would it ever, for goodness sakes, warrant the taking away of his property, not allowing him to continue accumulating.
I mean, $500 million, guys, that's what you came up with?
Come on.
So that gets at Eighth Amendment rights, right?
Because you can't have excessive fines, for example.
You cannot have the government come in and disproportionately say, okay, we're going to fine you, we're going to fine you, we're going to fine you with these huge penalties that have no relation to what actually may or may not have been done.
For example, you can't have cruel and unusual punishments.
I mean, this was $500 million.
I mean, and it would have been even bigger by the time all the interest had accumulated.
This was massive and it was unacceptable.
And the judges knew it at the time.
I couldn't believe it took so long.
That's the one thing that shocked me.
I mean, they knew from the very beginning.
And by the way, the media knew.
The media knows.
And Letitia does not have a lot of friends right now.
I mean, the media had already started to turn on her.
They said this was of her own making because everybody was like, what the heck is this case?
And you're bragging about this when it actually is just such a violation of people's rights, for goodness sakes, lady, which is what they tried to tell her.
I mean, hey, Tishy, honey, you have no vision.
victim in this case.
Remember when we listened to the arguments, this is Judith Vales speaking on behalf of Leticia James because again, when you go to the appellate court, you need smarter people arguing these cases, not a Leticia James who's just out for political blood.
May it please the court, Judith Vail for the New York Attorney General's Office.
All of the defendants repeatedly violated.
Ms. Vail, can you identify any previous case in which the Attorney General sued under Executive Law 6312 to upset a private business transaction that was between equally sophisticated partners, where the supposed victim had the ability and legal obligation to discover the allegedly misrepresented matters by conducting its own due diligence?
Where the supposed wrongdoer advised the supposed victim through written disclaimers to conduct its own due diligence and to draw its own conclusions, where the alleged misrepresentation almost entirely concerned inherently subjective valuations of properties and businesses.
Yes.
Deutsche Bank's Legal Decision00:08:00
And where the victim never complained about any fraud in the transactional losses from it.
Because I've gone through the cases which you've cited, and all of them always involved the consumer protection aspect, it involved protection of the market.
Several responses.
And I want to add to his question and little to no impact on the public marketplace.
Boom!
Okay, that's the one we all knew.
And then we've been sitting there waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting.
Normally, these things take like 30 days.
So it should have happened really quickly.
And yet, it took over 300 days.
So, what's that about?
Apparently, there was some debate about whether or not they were going to stick with the fraud charges, et cetera.
But they made the decision, they concluded that whatever he may or may not have done on that front.
It didn't warrant the kind of fraud fine that the judge and Letitia came up with.
That was just bonkers, and that was a violation of the Eighth Amendment.
But again, like they never had a case ever, and that was super evident from the very beginning.
You're pointing to Ernst Young, you're pointing to First American.
Ernst Young, you're dealing with the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
First American, you're dealing with an action brought against an appraiser who overvalued properties at the behest of a lender.
Perpetrating a scheme to induce unsophisticated consumers into taking out home loans that they could not afford.
It hardly seems that that justifies bringing an action to protect the wage bank against President Trump, which is what you have here.
I mean, you've got two really sophisticated parties in which no one lost any money.
And that was the point of my initial question.
Every case that you cite involved where there was damage to consumers, damage to the marketplace.
You've got a scheme to get unsophisticated consumers to take out home loans.
You've got a collapse of Lehman Brothers.
You don't have anything like that here.
Well, first of all, Your Honor, the statute doesn't require that whatsoever for liability.
And the statute is written broadly because the legislature wants the attorney general to go in and stop fraud and illegality.
Counsel, I think you hear underneath all of this.
Counsel, I think you're over your skis.
Bottom line here, we do have Eighth Amendment rights.
Now, in terms of the fraud aspect, you know, one of the challenging parts about all this, right?
You can't do, okay, you can't like say, you know, my apartment is 3,000 square feet when it's really 1,000 square feet, right?
And so that's part of the issue that's come up.
Again, does the punishment fit the crime?
Absolutely not, which is why you get back to the Eighth Amendment and the violation there.
So I'm not saying for any reason that somebody should inflate or exaggerate or any of that.
However, however, however, you can't justify what she did.
I mean, that is just sort of, it's kind of a slap on the wrist because there weren't any victims.
Like that's what the judges kept saying.
There aren't any victims in this case.
And so not that it makes it right, but typically you kind of got to have a victim, especially if it's going to be a case of that magnitude.
And if you're talking about those kinds of fines and putting people through that kind of torment, which, you know, frankly, he and his family were put through ATLL and back, right, because of Letitia James.
too male, too pale, too stale, and the whole bit, right?
This suddenly became just go get Trump instead of rooted in anything really legal or scholarly.
So this has been a wild case from the get-go.
I'm also struck by the fact that you had a Letitia James, attorney general of the state of New York, trying to intervene and say, well, I think Mar-a-Lago is worth this.
He thinks it's worth that.
So he's inflating it.
But isn't it up to Deutsche Bank, the actual bank that makes the financial decision to lend him the money, what they think it's worth?
Because at the end of the day, they're the ones that are responsible, right?
And as long as you're going to go after him on that front, then maybe you should be going after Letitia.
Maybe you should be going after Deutsche Bank too.
Because Deutsche Bank was the one who said, hey, you know what?
We'll take this.
We'll take this all day long.
They even said they would take it again because it was a great deal and everybody made money.
God forbid the Democrats ever let you make money.
Again, I'm not con donating, you know, inflating property values or anything like that.
But I'm also going to tell you, if Letitia James is telling you Mar-a-Lago's worth $18 million, you got bigger problems, all right?
Much, much bigger problems.
And that's the state meddling in private enterprise, which all of those judges were like, whoa, this is not good.
So what happens now?
Where does it go next?
Listen, she's still in a lot of trouble and we'll talk about that.
But now, because they're upholding this fraud case, he's appealing that one.
So he's got a victory.
on the financial front.
That is some validation, some legal validation as well, right?
Because she was violating his Eighth Amendment.
So that's a big, big deal.
And the New York Times even had to admit that.
I love this reading, quote, a New York appeals court on Thursday threw out a half billion dollar judgment against President Trump, eliminating the enormous financial penalty.
And then they had to write while declining to overturn the fraud case against him.
So again, that's what's going to go on to another appellate court there.
And what I think is kind of the sweet justice in all this.
is that this was her career defining victory, right?
She was like, I got him, for a half a billion dollars.
It's like a threat to anyone who ever wants to run for president and you don't happen to be on that side's team.
Who the heck wants to be in politics if that's what you're up against?
I mean, these people, these DAs, these AGs, they tend to be very political and it's a very, very gross distortion of what we should be.
But it's satisfying, right?
When the law comes back and the law makes the right decision.
In the case of this one, you have an Eighth Amendment.
backing you up you can have cruel and unusual punishments you can have excessive fines this is totally an excessive fine It was totally a cruel and unusual punishment because it just didn't merit anything like this.
You had no victims, as the judge said, not to mention, not to mention, it was Deutsche Bank's decision to take this on.
So, you know, is the state going to get in the way of that?
I don't think so.
That's not the kind of country we live in.
Granted, again, I'm not suggesting for two seconds that you can lie on anything or inflate on anything, but I would say that the onus is also on Deutsche Bank or whatever bank is doing the lending to make sure that they're okay with something because if push comes to shove, if he didn't pay the bill, Deutsche Bank would have been in there saying, hey, we need this, that, and the other.
We want to make sure that we can get something out of Mar-a-Lago.
So a huge, huge victory for Trump and his family today.
And certainly it's good to have this one off his shoulders.
What happens next?
He takes this to the appellate court again.
It's going to go up the food chain because he does not want to go down as having been convicted of fraud.
He does get some support here in that you know how viciously political she is to the point where, and also the judge.
I mean, what is the judge thinking?
I'd like to see his you know what get sued as well.
Because for someone like Arthur and Gorin, I never say it right.
And you know what?
I don't even care.
I don't even, whatever, E-N-D-O-G-O.
Arthur, let's just call him Judge Arthur.
What a vindictive, terrible person he is to completely ignore the Constitution.
What kind of judges do we have?
And so, yes, I'm happy.
That at the Appellate court there's some relief.
It should have happened sooner.
There was a lot of speculation that Kathy Holkle had her hand in there.
There was speculation about one judge in particular that was put there by Kathy Holkle and the White House had indicated that Kathy was sort of holding this over his head.
That was all rumored because Kathy's saying no no no, I would never do that, etc.
But you had to wonder, why was it taking so long?
If it normally takes 30 days, why did this take more than 300?
Virginia Mortgage Fraud Allegations00:06:22
At least we have some resolution however now, and i'll tell you, Leticia James is not out of trouble.
Leticia James could very well be looking at 30 years in the slammer for mortgage fraud herself, like the real kind of mortgage fraud, okay?
The kind of mortgage fraud that actually puts taxpayers at risk because she's involving taxpayer funds.
And she's also looking at a DOJ investigation out of New York regarding her alleged violation of Donald Trump's civil rights.
Ed Martin is the guy that was appointed by Pam Bondi, okay?
So Ed Martin is doing the investigation and he's poking around all kinds of places, including her backyard.
I mean, not to be intimidated or anything, right?
You know, I don't know, but when the feds are showing up at your doorstep, Gosh, Leticia, wasn't that what you were trying to do at Trump Tower, you know, when you wanted to have to confiscate all of his assets?
Weren't you doing that actually at his golf course, too?
Well, now Ed Martin's giving you a little bit of payback.
This is the DOJ investigator looking into one Leticia James after Bill Pultey over at the federal housing thing said, you know what?
I think that this woman might have committed mortgage fraud because why did she say, on her documentation when she applied for a mortgage in Virginia that this was her primary residence.
It's a fair question and Ed is trying to find out.
I want to show you this video that was taken by somebody on the street as he moseyed up.
He's looking like Columbo there in the trench coat with a colleague to take a good hard look at the stoop and see how many floors are actually in that brownstone because apparently she reported four but it's really five and that has something to do with the kind of rate you get on what you know, the mortgage.
You're not interested in the houses.
We know who lives here.
Is this like Second Empire?
It's just a track house.
That's what all of these things are.
I know, but when was it built, do you think?
They were built since 1899.
Oh, so, okay.
Why are you being so disingenuous about what you're here for?
You're not here about the houses.
You're here for the houses.
It's my neighborhood.
It's my block.
I'm just happy to be on a block looking at a house.
It's not true.
Why won't you be honest with me about what you're doing?
You are actually suspicious of my block in front of mine.
And you're not telling me what you're doing.
It's not true.
It's an interesting house.
It's a good house.
Thank you.
It's hard to hear.
No, no, I'm just asking.
What?
I'm just sure we, there's like the Pratt building.
You want me to tell you how to access the room?
We're interested in the houses.
No, I'm asking you.
I'm interested because usually the house is like this.
Tell me why you're here.
Beautiful, beautiful neighborhood.
Thank you.
Do you guys call this a stoop?
What do you think?
I don't know.
It's a stoop.
We didn't have stoops where I was growing up.
Is this a stoop?
I want to know what you're doing.
Just check it out.
You're not.
Okay, so this lady's all upset.
You know, why are you on my block?
I know what you're doing here.
This is Letitia's home, et cetera.
How dare you?
And it's like, well, you know, I guess all's fair in love and war.
A little bit of payback going on.
I would say, though, that, you know, Pultey's onto something.
Here he is just to I guess it might have been a couple of months ago, on with my friend Maria Bartiromo, my former colleague from both CNBC and Fox Business.
And he had a few things to say about Letitia's handling of her mortgage.
Watch.
Recommended that the DOJ investigate New York Attorney General Letitia James over alleged mortgage fraud.
The AG, Letitia James, has responded.
We don't have the video, but here's the quote This investigation into me is nothing more than retribution.
It's baseless.
It has to do with the fact that on a power of attorney, I mistakenly indicated that I was a state of Virginia resident.
And prior to that, I indicated to the mortgage broker that in fact, in bold cap letters, that I am not a resident of Virginia and never will be.
They just took the power of attorney and they're using that as a basis for enforcement of their investigation.
Bill, do you know why she said she was a resident of Virginia on the power of attorney, if in fact she wasn't?
Well, I know that we are mortgage experts and we only refer things that we think are mortgage fraud and we stand 100% behind the letter.
I'll let the letter speak for itself.
I do know and I have seen some reports from that subject, from that subject's criminal defense lawyer saying certain things.
I'll leave it to the DOJ to correct various things.
But again, when we see mortgage fraud, we are going to report it.
When we see mortgage fraud, we are going to prosecute it within the confines of our.
Duties.
And we are not going to be intimidated by a subject's criminal defense lawyer.
We are not going to be intimidated by a politician or just because you have an Esquire behind your name.
We are not going to be intimidated by people.
If we see mortgage fraud, we're going to do something about it.
And I think that you're going to see us be taking this on in a big way.
Mortgage fraud is a big problem.
These companies are safe and sound, but where we see it, we are going to do something about it.
And that subject's case is no different.
Well, what are the ramifications of this now that you've referred this for criminality to the DOJ?
Well, I would refer that to the DOJ.
Again, as I say, we spend our days, we are mortgage experts.
We are not politicians.
I view this as an economic job.
Obviously, the president can fire me at any time.
So I guess in that way.
But look, I look at this as an independent agency.
We found the mortgage fraud, whether it be that particular subject or other subjects.
And we work actively with the DOJ and different law enforcement.
You know what I think is great about this is he won't even say her name, right?
That particular subject, that particular subject that we none of us really even like to speak of, right?
Well, that particular subject is definitely, definitely in a whole lot of trouble.
Let me show you what Ed Martin put out today.
This is great.
Again, reminding you that this is the DOJ investigator that has been put in charge of the whole thing.
So he's kind of trolling her, right?
Like he's really trolling her.
And people might be like, well, why is he doing that?
But you know what?
Let's not forget what Letitia did, okay, guys?
Thomas on Independent Agency00:01:46
Like, and this is the world, sadly, I guess, in which we live.
But he put this picture out.
Can you see it?
Woo!
Good morning, America.
How are you?
Now, you know what's funny?
This came right before the news.
So I think he had kind of a heads up.
I think he knew that this was coming and that they were about to dismiss the $500 million penalty.
And so then he put this one out.
Thomas Brennan, thank you for your generosity.
Great to have everybody here.
I'm looking at all your comments live.
And James Vickery, thank you so much.
It is a wonderful day, right?
You know, listen, I flew all the way home from Greece yesterday, okay?
I was in the air for 11 hours.
I got home at like 1 30 in the morning.
And of course, I go through the news before I go to bed every night.
What are we going to lead with?
And I had a bunch of stories I wanted to talk to you guys about.
And even this morning, I got up extra early, extra early, because I'm still on some other time schedule.
And guess what?
This thing hit.
And I called David, who works on my team, and he didn't even know about it yet.
No, I mean, like this, we had it fresh, hot off the presses.
Unfortunately, there's some production that goes into doing this, so I couldn't join you right away.
It took me like an hour and a half or so.
But here I am.
And wow, so James, thank you for that.
And peace in my mind, good to see you back here.
And I really, Thomas, thank you as well.
Thomas Bryant, he said it's amazing that New Yorkers aren't complaining about the $10 million in tax money.
Of course, but you know what, Thomas, they are.
They're just not being heard.
I have showed you guys some polls that suggest Letitia actually isn't going to get elected again.
I realize they like her in New York City.
New York City is its own special kind of place.
I know.
I live there way too long.
I thank the Lord every day that I no longer have to live in New York City, but