Trump loses latest fight with New York Attorney General Letitia James over $110K contempt payment

• Trump had fought hard to get back a $110K contempt-of-court check he'd given NY's attorney general.
• On Tuesday, an appellate court rejected Trump's 1,000-page argument that the fine was unfair.

Donald Trump on Tuesday lost his very wordy legal fight over a $110,000 contempt-of-court payment he wants back from New York Attorney General Letitia James.

A New York appellate court spent just four paragraphs rejecting the former president's 1,000-page appeal of the contempt fine.

The panel of five appellate judges found that the fine — paid by Trump in May as punishment for flouting James' probe of his business — was "not excessive or otherwise improper."

The fine had been set last year by the same Manhattan judge presiding over James' upcoming $250 million fraud lawsuit against Trump, his three eldest children, and his real-estate and golf-resort company. That lawsuit is scheduled for trial in October.

The contempt fine was Trump's penalty for repeatedly failing to fully comply with James' subpoena for his personal business documents. Instead, Trump responded to the subpoena with delay tactics and a brief claim that a "diligent search" had failed to turn up any more documents.

Rather than produce his business records, "Mr. Trump produced 16 pages of boilerplate objections and a four-page affirmation by counsel that states, summarily, that Mr. Trump was unable to locate any responsive documents in his custody," the attorney general complained in demanding the fine.

Ultimately, Trump only ever turned over 10 personal business documents, just a fraction of the 900,000 documents totaling 6 million pages turned over in total by the Trump Organization.

In April, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron fined Trump $10,000 a day until Trump could provide a sworn affidavit detailing the Trump Organization's document-retention policy and describing what had been done to search for the records, as the subpoena had required.

Engoron correctly found that Trump's initial subpoena-dodging "was calculated to, and actually did, impair" the attorney general's fraud probe, Tuesday's New York Appellate Division decision found.

The contempt order was lifted in June.

A lawyer for Trump did not immediately say if he will further appeal the contempt fine; the former president's $110,000 for now remains in an attorney general's office escrow account. It would eventually become part of the general funds of the office.

"Once again, the courts have ruled that Donald Trump is not above the law," James wrote in a press statement.

"For years, he tried to stall and thwart our lawful investigation into his financial dealings, but today's decision sends a clear message that there are consequences for abusing the legal system. We will not be bullied or dissuaded from pursuing justice."

Trump is worth $3.2 billion by Forbes' reckoning, but he had spared little effort in trying to get his $110,000 payment back.

The appellate brief rejected on Tuesday totaled 977 pages.

The contempt fine was "vindictive," "speculative," "improper," "punitive," "excessive," and based on "threadbare justification," attorney Alina Habba argued over the course of a 233-page Notice of Motion, a 247-page Record on Appeal, and a pair of briefs totaling 497 pages.

Trump has lost repeatedly to James' office in the lead up to October's trial. In January, Engoron rejected what he called Trump's "borderline frivolous" request to dismiss James lawsuit altogether.

Also in January, Trump dropped his efforts to challenge James' lawsuit in federal court in Florida.

In November, he lost his fight against having a court-ordered monitor watch for what Engoron called "persistent fraud" at the Trump Organization.