President Donald Trump and New York Attorney General Letitia James both awkwardly claimed victory Thursday after New York's intermediate appeals court handed down its ruling in Trump's civil fraud case. But it would make for an odd ending to the case, because, strange as it is to say, it's not really a ruling.
Clicking into the PDF on the New York court system's website and seeing that the document spans 323 pages was a hint that it contained something unusual. But that was just the beginning. The oddity grew upon seeing, toward the start of the first of three separate decisions from the five-justice panel, that "none of the three decisions garners a majority."
The first opinion said that ordering the defendants to "pay nearly half a billion dollars to the State of New York, is an excessive fine that violates the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution." The second opinion agreed that James had the authority to bring the suit but said they thought a new trial was warranted. The third opinion argued for dismissing the case outright in Trump's favor.
OK, so how do we get a clear decision out of this?
This is a preview of Jordan Rubin's latest column. Read the full column here.
