On Friday, the judge presiding over the civil business fraud trial against Donald Trump ordered the former president, his sons, business associates and companies to pay more than $350 million in damages and shut down his New York business operations. He ordered that his abilities be temporarily restricted.
Judge Arthur Engoron ordered the former president and the Trump Organization to pay more than $354 million in damages, ruling that Trump “served as an officer or director of a New York corporation or other New York corporation for three years.” It was forbidden to do that. Including his namesake company.
The New York State Attorney General's Office, which brought the case, said the total judgment, including pre-judgment interest, was more than $450 million. Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement: “Donald Trump is finally being held accountable for his lies, his cheating, and his staggering fraud. No one is above the law, no matter how much they think they are,” he said. He said the ruling was “a huge victory for this state, this country, and everyone who believes we should all play by the same rules, including our former president.”
The ruling also bars President Trump and his companies from applying for bank loans for three years.
The decision could deal a blow to both Mr. Trump's finances and his personality — he built a brand as a successful businessman and leveraged it in his first presidential bid. Trump is currently running for his third White House bid. This case is just one of many he currently faces, including four pending criminal trials, the first of which is scheduled for March 25th. It is scheduled to begin in .
Engoron also continued to “appoint an independent monitor” and ordered the company to “establish an independent compliance director.”
In a post on his social media platform Truth Social, President Trump called the ruling “an illegal and un-American judgment against me, my family, and my huge business.” “This 'decision' is complete and utter bogus,” he wrote.
During the trial, President Trump and his company executives, including his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, took responsibility for the inflated financial statements at the heart of New York Attorney General Letitia James' fraud case. , tried to place the blame on the accountants who prepared the financial statements. Mr. Engoron disagreed.
“There is overwhelming evidence from both interested and disinterested witnesses, supported by documentary evidence, that the reward for being truthful in evaluating supporting data lies with Trump, not accountants,” he said. It's because of the organization,” he wrote.
no remorse
The judge also noted that Trump and his top officials' lack of remorse after the fraud was revealed also demonstrated the need for oversight.
“Their complete lack of remorse and remorse is pathological. They are only accused of inflating property values to make money. Documents prove this time and time again. It's a petty crime, not a capital crime. The defendants didn't commit murder. “They didn't rob banks at gunpoint. Donald Trump is not Bernard Madoff. cannot admit the error of its ways,” Engoron wrote.
“According to the Independent Monitor, the defendants' refusal to admit their error, and indeed their refusal to continue their error, means that this court will continue to do so unless it is judicially bound. “We conclude that the defendants are implicated in this action,” he added.
The ruling also bars Trump's sons, who have run the company since their father went to the White House, “from serving as officers or directors of any New York corporation or other New York corporation for a period of two years.” There is. ”
Trump Jr. tweeted: “We have reached a point where your political beliefs and the venue in which the case is heard, not the facts of the case, are the primary determinants of the outcome! What happened to our country… Really sad,” he posted.
President Trump's lawyer Alina Haba called the ruling a “plain and simple injustice.”
“Given the significant risks, we trust that the Appellate Division will reverse this terrible ruling and end this relentless persecution of my client,” she said in a statement.
A spokesperson for the Trump Organization called the ruling a “serious miscarriage of justice. The Trump Organization has never missed a loan payment or been in default on a loan.”
expensive litigation costs
Appeals in the case are expected to take several years, and President Trump may have to post full bail.
Read more: Trump faces nearly $400 million in legal fines. Can he afford it?
The ruling is Trump's second of the year, following an $83.3 million judgment last month in a defamation case against author E. Jean Carroll. President Trump said he plans to appeal the ruling, but he will also have to pay that amount of bail.
Mr. James had sought $370 million from Mr. Trump, his companies and their executives, alleging “repeated and persistent fraud” including falsification of business records and financial statements. Mr. James claimed that these financial statements were overstated, sometimes by as much as $2.2 billion.
Mr. James alleged that the defendants used inflated financial statements to obtain bank loans and insurance policies at interest rates they otherwise would not have received, “reaping hundreds of millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains.'' .
President Trump has maintained that his financial statements are conservative and that the AG's claims are politically motivated and a “fraud on me.”
“This is a lawsuit that should never have been filed, and I think we have a right to seek damages,” President Trump told reporters while attending closing arguments in the case on January 11. Told.
Trump's testimony was denied
The months-long civil trial included testimony from President Trump and his oldest children. The former president was combative on the stand at the time, accusing James of “hacking” and calling the judge “very hostile.”
Trump repeatedly complained about Engoron before and during the trial, and the judge slapped him with a partial gag order after he also began blasting the judge's law clerk. Mr. Trump's complaint prompted a flurry of death threats against Mr. Engoron and his clerks, court officials said, and Mr. Trump was fined $15,000 for violating the order twice.
Among the examples of fraud cited by the attorney general's office during the trial were Trump appraising his triplex in New York City's Trump Tower at three times its actual size and value, and golf appraisals. In order to increase the brand value, they included the inclusion of brand value. Financial statements clearly state that brand value is not included.
Another example the Attorney-General pointed out clearly struck a chord with him. It's a dispute over the value of Mar-a-Lago, his social club and residence in Florida. President Trump's financial statements from 2011 to 2021 valued Mar-a-Lago at between $426 million and $612 million, but Palm Beach County appraisers estimated the property's value at $426 million to $612 million during the same period. The market value of the company was estimated at $18 million to $27 million. President Trump also fraudulently inflated the property's value by saying it was his private residence, even though he signed an agreement saying it could only be used as a social club to reduce his tax burden.
Trump argued during the trial that the property was worth more.
“The judge said it was $18 million, but I say it's worth, like, 50 to 100 times that. So I don't know how they got that number,” Trump said. testified, adding that he believes it is actually worth “between $1 billion and $1.5 billion.”
Engoron said in Friday's ruling that he did not believe Trump was a reliable witness.
“Overall, Donald Trump rarely answered questions, frequently interjecting long, unrelated speeches on issues far beyond the scope of the trial; refusing to answer questions directly or, in some cases, “His credibility was seriously undermined by his failure to answer questions at all,” the judge wrote.
Michael Cohen's testimony 'credible'
James' investigation into the former president's businesses will lead to Trump's former personal attorney Michael telling the House Oversight Committee that Trump will unfairly expand or contract his values to suit whatever his business needs are. – Began in 2019 as a result of Cohen's congressional testimony.
Mr. Cohen testified at trial about his role in the scheme, saying that he did not specifically direct Mr. Trump and then-Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg to inflate the numbers in the financial statements, but that Mr. Cohen He said he was like a “mob boss” who would say something. What does he want without telling you directly?
While Trump maintains that Cohen's testimony exonerated him, he has branded Cohen an unreliable liar because he previously admitted to lying under oath.
In his ruling, Engoron called Cohen a “key witness” and said he found Cohen's testimony “credible.” “This fact-finder does not believe that pleading guilty to perjury means you can never tell the truth. Michael Cohen told the truth,” the judge wrote.
Former CFO “avoids”
Mr. Engoron was less forgiving of Mr. Weisselberg, the former Trump chief financial officer who previously pleaded guilty to tax evasion at the company.
Weisselberg's “testimony at this trial was deliberately avoided, and there were large gaps of 'I don't remember'.”
“There is overwhelming evidence that Allen Weisselberg intentionally falsified hundreds of business records during his tenure,” the judge said. “Mr. Weisselberg understood that his mandate from Donald Trump was to increase the reported assets each year without regard to their actual value. Examples of Mr. Weisselberg attempting to falsify business records include: There are too many to list,” he added.
The judge permanently prohibited Weisselberg from “engaging in the financial management functions of any New York corporation or similar entity doing business within the State of New York,” which he already received from the company's $2 million separation agreement. ordered to pay $1 million. “Ill-gotten gains.”
AG didn't initially ask for much
Mr. James filed a lawsuit against Mr. Trump in 2022 seeking $250 million in damages, and a judge appointed a monitor to oversee the company's finances in November of the same year.
In a summary judgment ruling handed down a week before the trial began, Engoron found that Trump and his top executives repeatedly committed fraud. “The documents here clearly contain fraudulent valuations used by the defendants in their business; [the attorney general’s] “The burden is on the defendant to establish liability as a matter of law,” the judge wrote, denying President Trump's dismissal of the case.
Engoron summed up Trump's defense: “The documents don't say what they say. There's no such thing as 'objective' value, and essentially courts shouldn't believe their own eyes.”
The order, which Mr. Trump appealed, said that Mr. Trump's business license in New York should be revoked. That would have dealt a major blow to Trump's company, potentially forcing him to sell some assets.
Engoron reversed that decision in Friday's ruling, saying the measure was “no longer necessary” with the addition of “two levels of oversight” by a monitor and a compliance director.
Trump complained about the summary judgment ruling while on the witness stand. “He told me I was a fraud before he knew anything about me. He didn't know anything about me,” Trump said. “That was a terrible thing to do.”
