Influential constitutional scholar and decorated Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Laurence Tribe called the New York Appellate Court’s decision to significantly reduce the dollar amount that former President Donald Trump must post — while extending the deadline by which he must post it — a “travesty of justice.”
Tribe characterizes the “unexplained reduction” in the bond amount required as “preferential treatment” of Trump by a five-judge panel that also blocked other restrictions that Judge Arthur Engoron had meted out in his decision finding Trump, Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr., and others in the Trump organization liable for fraud.
The NY appellate court’s unexplained reduction from $454M to $175M in the bond Trump must post in 10 days to secure the judgment pending appeal is a travesty of justice. Let’s hope public disgust with this preferential treatment will come back to bite Trump politically.
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) March 25, 2024
New York District Attorney Letitia James, who brought the case, said in response to the reduction that “Donald Trump is still facing accountability for his staggering fraud. The $464M judgment still stands.”
James means that while the amount of the surety bond, meant to ensure Trump would pay the damages if he is not successful on appeal, was reduced, the appellate court did not overturn the decision or reduce the amount Trump will owe if his appeal fails. The court only reduced the collateral it will require Trump to provide during the appeal process.
Tribe, an unambiguously anti-Trump figure, drew customary blowback from Trump supporters in the comments who characterize the original bond amount as egregious and — throwing Tribe’s words back at him — a “travesty of justice.”
Despite the rabid MAGA support he sees in his feed, Tribe, with a sense of resignation, writes: “Let’s hope public disgust with this preferential treatment will come back to bite Trump politically.”
[Related: Harvard Lawyer Blasts Trump Trial Judge — “It’s Not Hard!”]
For Tribe, Trump is a menace to Democracy who by his own admission and actions represents an acute threat to the Constitution and the rule of law. In addition to his legal opinions, Tribe uses his platform to advocate against Trump wherever he can, sharing material like the tweet below that draws latent parallels between Trump and Hitler.
Timothy Ryback’s new book, “Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power,” details “week by week, day by day, and sometimes hour by hour, how a country with a functional, if flawed, democratic machinery handed absolute power over to someone who could never claim a majority in an actual…
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) March 23, 2024
Tribe’s legal expertise — if not his political opinion — is broadly considered top tier. Even conservative former U.S. Court of Appeals Judge J. Michael Luttig — in the news recently for an amicus brief at SCOTUS supporting the legal basis for the removal of Trump from the Colorado ballot for participation in an insurrection — wrote last year that “Laurence H. Tribe has been the Nation’s preeminent constitutional scholar for the past half-century.”