Michael R. Sisak, Author at The Rapid City Post

FILE - New York Attorney General Letitia James speaks during a news conference outside Manhattan federal court in New York, Feb. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, File)

New York attorney general asks court to reinstate President Trump’s massive civil fraud penalty

September 4, 2025

New York’s attorney general is moving to have the state’s highest court reinstate President Donald Trump’s staggering civil fraud penalty. Attorney General Letitia James on Thursday appealed a lower-court decision that slashed the potential half-billion-dollar fine to $0. James’ office filed a notice of appeal with the state’s Court of Appeals, seeking to reverse the mid-level Appellate Division’s ruling last month that the penalty violated the U.S. Constitution’s ban on excessive fines. James, a Democrat, had previously said she would appeal. Trump, a Republican, filed his own appeal last week. He’s asking the Court of Appeals to throw out business-related punishments that the Appellate Division left in place.

FILE - E. Jean Carroll exits the New York Federal Court after former President Donald Trump appeared in court, Sept. 6, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez, File)

Trump plans to ask Supreme Court to toss E. Jean Carroll’s $5 million abuse and defamation verdict

September 3, 2025

President Donald Trump will soon ask the Supreme Court to throw out a jury’s finding in a civil lawsuit that found that he sexually abused writer E. Jean Carroll at a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s and later defamed her. Trump’s lawyers previewed the move in paperwork asking the high court to extend its deadline for challenging the $5 million verdict from Sept. 10 to Nov. 11. Trump “intends to seek review” of “significant issues” arising from the trial and the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ subsequent decisions upholding the abuse and defamation verdict. Trump has denied Carroll’s allegations.

FILE - Former President Donald Trump attends the closing arguments in the Trump Organization civil fraud trial at New York State Supreme Court in the Manhattan borough of New York, Jan. 11, 2024. (Shannon Stapleton/Pool Photo via AP, File)

Trump asks court to toss remaining civil fraud penalties after getting his massive fine thrown out

August 26, 2025

Days after getting his massive civil fraud penalty thrown out, President Donald Trump asked New York’s highest court on Tuesday to overturn his other punishments, including a multiyear ban on him and his two eldest sons holding corporate leadership positions. Trump’s lawyers filed a notice of appeal with the state’s Court of Appeals, seeking to erase the remaining effects of New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit, which alleges he inflated his net worth on financial paperwork given to banks and insurers. It’s the first of a pair of expected appeals after a five-judge panel of the state’s mid-level Appellate Division last week overturned Trump’s monetary penalty.

FILE - Former President Donald Trump sits in the courtroom before the start of closing arguments in his civil business fraud trial at New York Supreme Court, Jan. 11, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, Pool, File)

What’s next after a court cut Donald Trump’s $515 million fine to $0

August 22, 2025

President Donald Trump was quick to declare “TOTAL VICTORY” after a New York appeals court threw out a civil fraud penalty that stood to cost him more than a half-billion dollars. But Thursday’s ruling overturning the key punishment in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit isn’t the last word. James, a Democrat, has vowed to appeal to the state’s highest court. Trump still faces other punishments as a result of the lawsuit — including a ban on him and his two eldest sons holding corporate leadership positions for a few years — and could appeal in an attempt to get those reversed.

FILE - This photo from Tuesday May 3, 2011, shows the Thurgood Marshall U.S. Courthouse where the Second Circuit Court of Appeals is located in New York's lower Manhattan. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)

Appeals court overturns right-wing influencer’s conviction for spreading 2016 election falsehoods

July 9, 2025

A federal appeals court has overturned a self-styled right-wing propagandist’s conviction for spreading falsehoods on social media in an effort to suppress Democratic turnout in the 2016 presidential election. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday ordered a lower court to enter a judgment of acquittal for Douglass Mackey, finding that trial evidence failed to prove the government’s claim that the 36-year-old Florida man conspired with others to influence the election. Mackey was convicted in March 2023 in federal court in Brooklyn on a charge of conspiracy against rights after posting false memes that said supporters of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton could vote for her by text message or social media post.

President Donald Trump speaks during an event to sign a bill blocking California's rule banning the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035, in the East Room of the White House, Thursday, June 12, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Appeals court won’t reconsider ruling that Trump must pay E. Jean Carroll $5M in sex abuse case

June 13, 2025

A federal appeals court won’t reconsider its ruling upholding a $5 million civil judgment against President Donald Trump in a civil lawsuit alleging he sexually abused a writer in a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s. In an 8-2 vote, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Trump’s petition for the full appellate court to rehear arguments in his challenge to the jury’s finding that he sexually abused advice columnist E. Jean Carroll and defamed her with comments he made in October 2022. Carroll testified at a 2023 trial that Trump turned a friendly encounter in spring 1996 into a violent attack after they playfully entered the store’s dressing room. Trump denies the allegation.

A federal appeals court is set to hear arguments in Trump’s bid to erase his hush money conviction

June 10, 2025

President Donald Trump’s quest to erase his criminal conviction is heading to a federal appeals court. A three-judge panel in Manhattan is set to hear arguments Wednesday in the Republican’s long-running fight to get the New York case moved from state court to federal court. Trump is asking the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to intervene after a lower-court judge twice rejected the move. If the case is transferred to federal court, he could then seek to have the verdict thrown out on presidential immunity grounds. It’s one way he’s trying to get last year’s hush money verdict overturned.

FILE - Luigi Mangione, accused of fatally shooting Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, appears in Manhattan state court in New York, Friday, Feb. 21, 2025. (Curtis Means/Pool Photo via AP, File

Suspect in UnitedHealthcare CEO killing said he ‘had it coming,’ according to prosecutors

June 4, 2025

Six weeks before UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was gunned down outside a Manhattan hotel last December, Luigi Mangione mused about rebelling against “the deadly, greed fueled health insurance cartel” and expressed that killing the executive “conveys a greedy bastard that had it coming.” Manhattan prosecutors revealed the comments in a court filing Wednesday. The Manhattan district attorney’s office quoted extensively from Mangione’s handwritten diary as they fight to uphold his state murder charges. Mangione’s lawyers want the state case thrown out, arguing that those charges and a parallel federal death penalty case amount to double jeopardy. The 27-year-old Mangione has pleaded not guilty in both cases. No trial dates have been set.

Michael R. Sisak.