He has often expressed impatience with them. In an appearance last week, he appeared to grow tired of a particular line of argument advanced by Mr. Kise and, pounding on the bench, said, “You cannot make false statements and use them in business.”
In his order on Tuesday, he took the unusual step of fining each of Mr. Trump’s lawyers $7,500, writing that their continued assertion of arguments he had previously rejected was “indefensible.”
That sum was more than what Ms. James was seeking when she asked the judge to penalize them.
At one point, he criticized the arguments of Mr. Trump’s lawyers as straining credulity, including the notion that the square footage of an apartment could be subjective.
“That is a fantasy world, not the real world,” he wrote.
Trump is not out of options.
Mr. Trump has at least two routes left to challenge Justice Engoron. He can appeal the ruling and seek an emergency stay of the trial, a move that Mr. Trump’s lawyers indicated they might pursue.
Even if that does not work, Mr. Trump is awaiting a decision from an appeals court on the lawsuit he filed against Justice Engoron. In it, Mr. Trump argued that the judge had ignored an earlier appeals court ruling that raised the prospect that some evidence against the former president was too dated to be used at trial.
The appeals court is expected to rule as soon as Thursday.
