New Yorkers watched Judge Arthur Engoron slap Donald Trump with a penalty so absurd an appeals court later gutted it.
That same move just happened in Washington state, in a fight over how much of your paycheck the state takes.
What that judge did on the bench has conservatives asking why he still has a robe.
Thurston County Judge Berates Attorney in Open Court Then Rules for Democrats Anyway
Thurston County Superior Court Judge Chris Lanese was supposed to be a neutral referee.
Instead, according to PJ Media's Victoria Taft, Lanese threw a courtroom tantrum while hearing arguments over Initiative IP26-645, the measure to repeal Washington's new income tax.
The attorney representing Let's Go Washington, the group led by Brian Heywood that got the repeal on the ballot, tried to argue that Democrat Attorney General Nick Brown's office had written misleading ballot language.
Taft describes Lanese gesticulating wildly, baring his teeth, and glaring at the attorney with what she called "savage disdain."
This wasn't a disagreement over case law.
It was a judge visibly disgusted that a conservative lawyer dared push back on a Democrat official's wording.
Then Lanese ruled for the state anyway, upholding Brown's disclosure language over the repeal campaign's objections.
Paul Guppy of the Washington Policy Center flagged the ruling as exactly the kind of thumb-on-the-scale outcome voters should expect when a partisan judge controls the words they'll read on their ballot.
Washington voters will now see the state's preferred framing of a tax increase, crafted by the same Democrats who passed it, defended by a judge who couldn't hide his contempt for anyone who objected.
This Is the Same Playbook Judge Engoron Ran on Trump
Sound familiar?
It should.
Arthur Engoron sat on the bench in Manhattan and hit Trump with a $454 million penalty in a fraud case where no bank lost a dime and every lender wanted to keep doing business with him.
Legal scholar Jonathan Turley called the ruling "grotesque" and said the number itself was "absurd."
Turley's exact words were that Engoron "showed no restraint at all."
A New York appellate panel eventually agreed, striking the $500 million-plus penalty as an unconstitutional violation of the Eighth Amendment.
Appellate Justice David Friedman went further, writing that Attorney General Letitia James's real goal was never fraud enforcement.
Friedman said it was "the derailment of President Trump's political career."
That's the pattern. A Democrat attorney general uses the machinery of government against a political target, and a judge with an obvious partisan grudge waves it through until a higher court has to clean up the mess.
Lanese didn't throw out a hostile witness or scold a lawyer for grandstanding.
He melted down over a citizen initiative that threatens to take money away from the government he answers to.
Judges are supposed to hide which team they're rooting for.
Lanese couldn't even manage that for one afternoon on camera.
Every time one of these meltdowns goes viral, it hands Republicans another exhibit for the case that the judiciary picked a side years ago and never looked back.
Sources:
- Victoria Taft, "Watch 'Unbiased' Leftist Judge Become Completely Unhinged in Open Court in Election Case," PJ Media, August 8, 2026.
- "Trump wins major appellate court ruling erasing $500 million penalty," Fox News, 2026.
- Katelyn Caralle, "Turley Says Judge's Ruling In Trump Civil Fraud Case Is 'Absurd,' 'Quite Grotesque,'" Daily Caller, March 25, 2024.
- "Harger: The legislature built a perfect trap for the income tax repeal. A Thurston County judge just proved the trap works," MyNorthwest.com, August 2026.
- "Judge upholds income tax ballot disclosure, sparks sponsor outrage," The Center Square, August 2026.
