Trump’s $500 million fine wasn’t justice

The New York Appellate Division’s decision to overturn the half-billion-dollar civil fraud penalty against Donald Trump should not be seen as a partisan victory. It is a constitutional one. The court ruled that the judgment – originally $354 million before interest ballooned it past $500 million – violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on excessive fines. This was an overdue reminder that even a former president is entitled to the same constitutional protections as every American.

This judgment threatened to become less about enforcing the law, and more about making an example out of a political enemy.

The Constitution does not permit prosecutors to weaponize financial penalties into tools of annihilation. The Eighth Amendment exists precisely to stop government officials from piling on punitive fines in order to crush those they dislike. If half a billion dollars can be extracted from a former president in the name of justice, what chance does a mid-sized developer, entrepreneur, or family-owned company have when it runs afoul of an ambitious attorney general?

That question matters, because this case was political from the start. New York Attorney General Letitia James campaigned on a promise to “get Trump.” Her case succeeded before a trial judge who eagerly embraced the role of scourge. But when the appeals court reviewed the judgment, it found the punishment was grossly out of proportion – even while upholding aspects of liability and oversight of Trump’s businesses.

Conservatives have long warned about the dangers of lawfare: the use of legal tools to punish opponents who cannot be beaten at the ballot box. Excessive fines are a subtle but devastating form of lawfare. They bankrupt reputations, erase livelihoods, and chill entire industries. Once a government realizes it can levy ruinous penalties with impunity, no one who falls out of favor is safe.

The Framers of our Constitution knew this danger. That is why they wrote into the Bill of Rights a clear prohibition on “excessive fines.” They had seen how European monarchies used monetary penalties not to enforce justice but to confiscate wealth and crush dissent. To ignore that history is to forget why America was founded in the first place.

The Trump case now stands as a warning. It tells us what happens when the constitutional limit is forgotten in the heat of partisan zeal. Half a billion dollars is not a fine; it is political theater masquerading as justice. If such judgments are allowed to stand, we risk normalizing the idea that state officials can obliterate businesses and individuals simply because they hold the wrong views or sit on the wrong side of power.

Some will object: Trump is not “ordinary,” so why should we care? But the Constitution does not recognize “ordinary” and “extraordinary” citizens. Its protections are universal. The Eighth Amendment was not written for the sympathetic defendant, but for the unpopular one. If the law does not restrain the state in its dealings with those we dislike, then it will not restrain the state at all.

New York’s appeals court has done the country a service by restoring that balance. Liability remains. Oversight remains. But the crushing fine is gone, replaced by a principle older and stronger than any one man’s controversies: proportionality under the Constitution.

In the months ahead, Democrats will no doubt rail against this outcome as proof of judicial bias. Republicans will hail it as Trump’s vindication. Both miss the larger point. This decision is not about Donald Trump’s fate. It is about whether constitutional guardrails still mean something in America’s legal system.

They do. And every business owner, taxpayer, and citizen should breathe a sigh of relief.