Motion for gimme a break, your honor, Donald Trump’s lawyers argued. They searched every closet, desk and nightstand in all of Trump’s hideouts and not a single document was anywhere. The cell phones the persecution wants were handed over years ago. Please stop the running fines, which are currently a whopping $140,000 and counting up at 10k a day, they plead.
We searched everywhere
Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers searched his personal quarters, then filed an affidavit with the court on Friday, May 6, swearing under oath that Trump “doesn’t currently have any phones, computers or electronic devices issued to him by the Trump Organization.”
He can’t hand over what he hasn’t got. On top of that, they write to the judge, he “authorized his attorneys to search his homes in Bedminster, New Jersey, his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, and his personal residence in Trump Tower for any documents sought by New York Attorney General Letitia James’ subpoena.” They didn’t find a single thing.
The attorney general for New York state convinced the judge to hit Donald Trump right in the wallet with a civil contempt ruling. The main point of contention involves four cell phones identified by the probe and any financial related documents.
He doesn’t keep those at home and the cell phones are long gone. The attorneys searched hard personally, they swear, and came up empty.
Judge Arthur Engoron was thrilled to be able to inconvenience the deplorable-in-chief with a “$10,000 per day penalty that has accrued to $140,000.” He wasn’t happy with the lawyers either. He called their last affidavit “completely devoid of any useful detail.”
They worked hard to provide all the gory details this time around. They named every nook and cranny where they found nothing. Alina Habba “personally searched every nightstand, desk and closet at Trump’s properties and found no documents sought by the December 2021 subpoena.”
All the details
This time around, the lawyers argue, we’ll break it down to every nut and bolt. First, on the cell phones, all the way back in 2015 the Trump Organization handed him a smart phone and two flip phones. He hasn’t got them now.
He also had his own Samsung phone he brought with him to the White House. His handlers took that one away “at some point while I was President,” he swears. The lawyers searched and didn’t find any unaccounted phones.
Trump admitted well before he was searched that he “currently has two cell phones, an iPhone he uses for personal matters and another phone he just received from Truth Social, the social media company, that he said he uses exclusively to post content on its website.”
He already handed over the iPhone and he handed it over again.
“I previously submitted my iPhone to be searched and imaged on March 21, 2022. In an abundance of caution, and in accordance with the Order, I recently resubmitted my cell phone to be searched and imaged again in early May 2022,” Trump wrote. He hasn’t used email since 2010, he insists.
He doesn’t “use email, text messages, or a computer for work.” He also “does not keep documents, files or papers relating to his business at his personal homes.” He doesn’t like to talk about it but he doesn’t actually read that much. He gets his assistants to break it down for him with lots of images.
