Former President Donald Trump, who moved quickly to appeal a recent judgment against him in New York civil court, has former liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to thank according to filings by his attorneys submitted earlier this week.

A previous opinion by Ginsburg is cited heavily in Trump's appeal of a $454 million judgment by Judge Arthur Engoron concluding his real estate business artificially inflated the value of its assets in order to obtain advantageous business contracts. In a unanimous 2019 ruling on Timbs v. Indiana, Justice Ginsburg wrote on behalf of the court that the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits excessive fines, is applicable in state cases.

During a recent Fox News town hall, President Trump read from the Eighth Amendment, which states, “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”

The Timbs case was a blow to the state of Indiana, which attempted to confiscate a $42,000 Land Rover vehicle owned by resident Tyson Timbs who owed approximately $10,000 in fines related to a criminal case.

“The Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause is an incorporated protection applicable to the States under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause,” the Supreme Court found at the time.

“The prohibition embodied in the Excessive Fines Clause carries forward protections found in sources from Magna Carta to the English Bill of Rights to state constitutions from the colonial era to the present day,” Ginsburg argued in the case. “Protection against excessive fines has been a constant shield throughout Anglo-American history for good reason: Such fines undermine other liberties.”

“They can be used, e.g., to retaliate against or chill the speech of political enemies,” she observed.

An AP analysis of 150 civil fraud cases over the past 70 years concluded that President Trump's case represents the “only big business found that was threatened with a shutdown without a showing of obvious victims and major losses," according to the Western Journal .

Despite threats from Democrat New York Attorney General Letitia James to seize entire skyscrapers owned by Trump if he fails to pay the fine, legal observers believe the Republican may be on solid ground in arguing that the mammoth judgment is a disproportionate punishment for a case where there is no victim of fraud.

“The key to dealing with New York’s attempt to legalize the stealing of President Trump’s property is the 8th amendment and the Supreme Court’s most recent ruling," conservative scholar Mark Levin said on Fox News earlier this week.

Justice Ginsburg, who died in 2020, was a vocal critic of President Trump and warned about the threat he represents to democracy.

“He has no consistency about him,” the justice told CNN. “He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego. … How has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns? The press seems to be very gentle with him on that.”

Asked about where the country would head under a second Trump term, Ginsburg said ominously, “For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be — I don’t even want to contemplate that."

That makes this "gift" to Trump even more hilarious