And at least three distinguished SCOTUS judges are highly likely to agree with you.
As I said before, I favor states trying this unless obviously against their state constitution. The federal constitution is too vaguely worded to know how that would go, especially in such a political case.
SCOTUS Republicans might say it is an excessive fine banned by the 8th amendment. But that’s too speculative to be a reason not to try.
I stole the 8th amendment idea from this Politico article:
…Which involved charging people with the criminal offense of subversive activities. Previously, Cummings v. Missouri, which was a case defining what a Bill of Attainder was, had involved oath laws that turned previously legal acts into crimes, and increased the penalty of known crimes. Ex parte Garland was a similar case involving Bills of Attainder, also involving oath laws, and criminally punished a person for a crime that he was pardoned for.
I’m not saying it isn’t unconstitutional, and my gut tells me it probably is. But not as a Bill of Attainder. I don’t even see what crime is being alleged by this tax. And these are attempts to hijack a payout, not levy fines against people or garner their wages. I can see an argument that this is a form of civil forfeiture, where the payout is part of a crime on the behalf of the Trump administration, rather than those receiving the money, and might therefore violate the 8th Amendment as @PhillyGuy suggests.
Of course, you have to determine that a crime occurred to begin with. And while that has been alleged, it hasn’t been determined by any legal process yet.
I don’t think that would happen. They’d definitely make the effort to block the payouts. That’s the kind of thing that Democrats actually do; they care about blocking Republican money.
On the other hand, going after people criminally for their involvement? I don’t think they’d go any farther than a gentle reprimand, even if a blatant violation of law occurred.
Trump wishes she was as bereft of morals and humanity as him so he could just offer her a chuck of the payout. That’s how his heroes would handle this situation.
To undo it, the Judge will need to prove fraud. That’s hard. Near impossible when neither party is bothered by the fraud / not going to be offering any evidence.
With that said, if I’m the Judge, I wouldn’t start this process unless I already knew how I was going to rule. It would suck to look this over and effectively give it approval if you don’t undo it.
Didn’t they add her initials to the settlement agreement as though she signed off on it? I hope I heard that right, because that could hopefully come back to bite them in the ass at least for disbarrment.
The fraud the Court is concerned about here is “fraud on the court”. Basically, using the legal system itself for an improper purpose. Here, pretending the two parties were adverse that required a lawsuit and billion dollar settlement. It didn’t.
The problem is neither party is concerned about it. And im not sure a Judge gets to decide whether a settlement is fair or not (especially when both parties agree it is). Here, a non-party had to file the motion into this case to bring it to the Judge’s attention.