Ruth Bader Ginsburg's "Final Gift" To Trump Backfires On Liberals

Former President Donald Trump, who moved quickly to appeal a recent judgment against him in New York civil court, has former liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to thank according to filings by his attorneys submitted earlier this week. A previous opinion by Ginsburg is cited heavily in Trump’s appeal of a $454 million judgment by Judge Arthur Engoron concluding his real estate business artificially inflated the value of its assets in order to obtain advantageous business contracts. In a unanimous 2019 ruling on Timbs v. Indiana, Justice Ginsburg wrote on behalf of the court that the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits excessive fines, is applicable in state cases. During a recent Fox News town hall, President Trump read from the Eighth Amendment, which states, “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” The Timbs case was a blow to the state of Indiana, which attempted to confiscate a $42,000 Land Rover vehicle owned by resident Tyson Timbs who owed approximately $10,000 in fines related to a criminal case. See Product See Product See Product See Product See Product See Product See Product See Product “The Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause is an incorporated protection applicable to the States under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause,” the Supreme Court found at the time. “The prohibition embodied in the Excessive Fines Clause carries forward protections found in sources from Magna Carta to the English Bill of Rights to state constitutions from the colonial era to the present day,” Ginsburg argued in the case. “Protection against excessive fines has been a constant shield throughout Anglo-American history for good reason: Such fines undermine other liberties.” “They can be used, e.g., to retaliate against or chill the speech of political enemies,” she observed. An AP analysis of 150 civil fraud cases over the past 70 years concluded that President Trump’s case represents the “only big business found that was threatened with a shutdown without a showing of obvious victims and major losses,