The thing is, his lawyers knew they had a losing case and that there was nothing they could do to stop it from going down. Their behavior is the legal equivalent of a ‘Hail Mary’ and they had no other choice but to continue to press frivolous arguments as their desperation grew throwing anything they could against the wall hoping it would stick.
The judge even called out that this is not their first rodeo when it comes to being sanctioned:
There is also a larger context to the sanctions issue. Several defendants are no strangers to
sanctions and why courts are sometimes constrained to issue them. In the investigatory special
proceeding this Court found Donald Trump in contempt of Court and sanctioned him $10,000
per day for failing to comply with his discovery obligations. This Court lifted the contempt after
11 days.
New York legal parlance would be called “a motion to reargue,” pursuant to which Donald
Trump asked Judge Middlebrooks to vacate sanctions imposed on him and his legal team totaling
close to one million dollars. Judge Middlebrooks wrote, on the first page thereof, that “Movants acted in bad faith in bringing this lawsuit and that this case exemplifies Mr. Trump’s history of abusing the judicial process.”
