Legal analyst "shocked" after Trump's "angry" lawyers demand judge delay fraud payout

Lawyers for Donald Trump on Wednesday requested a 30-day postponement in the enforcement of the nearly $355 million fine the former president was ordered to pay last week in his civil fraud trial, Axios reports. The attorneys took issue with the draft proposal New York Attorney General Letitia James, who brought the suit, submitted Tuesday for Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron to sign, arguing that James should have notified them beforehand.

A Wednesday letter signed by Trump defense attorney Clifford Robert to Engoron charged James with an "unseemly rush to memorialize" the judgement in a manner he argues violates "all accepted practice in New York state court." A stay on the decision he said, would "allow for an orderly post-Judgment process, particularly given the magnitude" of the judge's ruling. "To deprive Defendants of the opportunity to submit a proposed counter-judgment would be contrary to fundamental fairness and due process," Robert wrote in an earlier Wednesday letter to Engoron about James' proposed order.

According to legal news site Law & Crime, James' proposal was mostly a formality and "constructed out of legal boilerplate" as "[p]roposed orders are frequently filed by the parties in legal cases as a matter of course."

"Trump's lawyers, angry that Judge Engoron is apparently not going to allow motion practice on reducing his opinion to a formal judgment, demands a 30-day stay of any entered judgment instead," MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin wrote on X/Twitter. "Shocked."

Trump has said he will appeal Engoron's judgment against him and his co-defendants, which included his two elder sons, which totals $364 million. Engoron's ruling also barred Trump from heading a New York business for three years, and his sons from doing the same for two years.