Shirtless photos featured in a newsletter curated by Judge Arthur Engoron have ignited a storm of criticism from supporters of former President Donald Trump.
According to a report by Newsweek on Tuesday, November 7, the images, alleged to be of the New York judge presiding over Trump’s civil fraud trial, have raised eyebrows as they appeared in his high school alumni newsletter.
Archived newsletters from the Wheatley School Alumni Association reveal pictures believed to be Engoron’s torso, dated 2020 and 2021.
Engoron, a 74-year-old judge, is an alumnus of the high school in Old Westbury, New York, graduating in 1967.
The newsletter notably concludes with an unusual request: “Please send me your autobiography before someone else sends me your obituary.”
While the images were criticized as potential progress photos of Engoron’s physique, Newsweek has not independently confirmed this.
One newsletter captioned the pictures as a “before and after,” while another included a selfie from October 2020 labeled as a “bonus torso photo.”
In a surprising turn of events, a Trump-affiliated group, Marco Polo, shared screenshots of the newsletter and full-body pictures of Engoron taken at a gym on X (formerly Twitter).
Their post read, “The judge who is harassing DJT in NYC takes naked selfies in the mirror at the gym & then posts them to the high school alumni newsletter he maintains.”
The self-described “opposition research group” is led by former Trump White House aide Garrett Ziegler.
The group added a touch of humor, noting, “Engoron included a ‘BonusTorsoPhoto’ but luckily spared his readers the bottom half.”
Conservative commentator and Trump supporter Collin Rugg also chimed in on the resurfacing of the newsletters.
He tweeted, “The judge presiding over Trump’s NYC trial appears to have a peculiar hobby of posting half-naked photos of himself on a high school alumni newsletter he controls.”
“This man is not well,” Rugg remarked.
Expressing similar sentiments, another MAGA supporter expressed, “I do not want to see Judge Engoron’s torso.”
Engoron finds himself under scrutiny from both Trump supporters and the former president himself. In a courtroom face-off, Trump took the witness stand in a $250 million civil fraud suit.
This suit accuses him, his two eldest sons, and the Trump Organization of inflating their assets.
Before testifying, Trump took to Truth Social, criticizing Engoron as “a really Biased, Nasty, Club controlled, but often overturned, Judge.”
Throughout the testimony, Engoron repeatedly attempted to guide Trump, urging him to answer questions and even calling on Trump’s lawyers to “control him if you can.”
On the stand, the former president contested a previous ruling that found him liable for “persistent and repeated” fraud, asserting, “He called me a fraud and he didn’t know anything about me.”
