The judges who threw Trump a lifeline are the kind of people he usually loves to hate

On March 25, five appellate justices of the New York State Supreme Court threw Donald Trump a lifeline. On the last day for Trump to post a $454 million bond in his civil fraud case or risk seizure of his assets by New York Attorney General Letitia James, the justices in a unanimous decision reduced the bond to $175 million, gave the former president 10 more days to pay it and suspended the ruling prohibiting him from serving as an officer or director of a business in New York for three years.

The panel’s action was unusual. According to experts, judges are almost always unwilling to allow losers of lawsuits to, in essence, provide IOUs to cover fines while their appeals are pending. Neal Pederson, owner of a bond agency, can recall it happening no more than a couple of dozen times in 30 years. Eric Snyder, chair of a company enforcing bond payments, knows of no equivalent judgment.

“We greatly appreciate and respect the appellate division very much,” Trump declared, and then blasted Attorney General James and Judge Arthur Engoron, who presided over his civil fraud trial, as “absolutely crooked,” partisan Democrats fronting for a Biden administration witch hunt whose sole aim is to destroy him. On April 1, Knight Specialty Insurance, a company known for providing subprime automobile loans to buyers with low credit ratings, secured the bond, collateralized by $175 million in cash.

Trump has not mentioned that all five New York appellate justices were appointed by Democratic governors. Nor has the former president said anything about their racial and ethnic backgrounds.

It’s worth remembering that Trump declared in 2016 that Judge Gonzalo Curiel is “a hater of Donald Trump” because he allowed a class action lawsuit against Trump University to go forward. Trump demanded that Curiel, who was born in Indiana, recuse himself in a case involving construction of a wall on the southern border because “he’s Mexican … a member of a society, you know, very pro-Mexico.”

Trump also says that Judge Juan Merchan — the presiding judge in the Stormy Daniels hush money fraud case — “hates me.” As a reminder, no doubt, that Merchan, who was born in Bogota, Colombia, is one of “them,” Trump referred to the judge by his full name, “Juan Manuel Merchan,” who was “hand-picked” by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat.

Trump wants fewer immigrants from “shithole countries” and more from Norway. He maintains that undocumented immigrants are coming from prisons and mental institutions and “poisoning the blood of our country.”

Let’s take a closer look at the backgrounds of the justices who gave Trump an 11th-hour reprieve, which refutes his endlessly repeated claims about the all-in participation of Democrats and people who do not look like “us” in the “weaponized” system of justice.

A life-long resident of the Bronx, Justice Dianne Renwick is the first African American woman to serve as the presiding judge of any appellate division in New York State. She is the inaugural chair of the division’s Anti-Bias Committee.

Justice Lizbeth Gonzalez, an exchange student at La Universidad de Puerto Rico while she was an undergraduate at SUNY Stony Brook, has served as director of legal services for the American Indian Law Alliance and president of the Association of Judges of Hispanic Heritage.

Born in India, Anil Singh is the first person of South Asian heritage to sit on the New York State Appellate Court. Rolando Acosta, his former colleague on the court, believes Singh’s experiences have given him a deeper understanding of the importance of democratic institutions.

Justice Bahaati Pitt-Burke was born in Guyana and raised in the Bronx. A former trial attorney with the Legal Aid Society, she has served as president of the Bronx County Black Bar Association, chair of a Gender Bias and Gender Fairness Commission and member of the Latino Judges Association.

Before her appointment as an appellate judge, Kelly O’Neill Levy worked in Family Court and the Harlem Community Justice Center. Her mother, Joan O’Dwyer, was the first female judge in Queens; her father, John P. O’Neill, a firefighter, died when Kelly was 12. Justice O’Neill has served as president of the Irish American Bar Association.

In all likelihood, not one of these judges voted for Donald Trump. They may or may not detest him. Either way, they issued a decision, based on their independent assessments of the facts and the law, that staved off disaster for the former president and his businesses.

Meanwhile, in other venues, prosecutors and judges — some but by no means all of them “woke” Democrats — are also doing their professional duty. They are evaluating or will evaluate voluminous evidence that Trump and his lieutenants violated civil and criminal laws. In insisting that these officials are engaged in a partisan conspiracy to bring him down, Trump can have but one aim: delegitimize them and discredit that evidence to escape accountability for his behavior.

Americans should acknowledge that people who are indicted and convicted, despite representation by the best lawyers money can buy, are almost always guilty. And Donald J. Trump seems to be one of them.

Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Emeritus Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.