Former President Donald Trump must pay penalty of nearly $355m (£281m) to New York state for lying about the values of his properties, a judge has ruled.
The ruling in Donald J. Trump’s civil fraud case could cost him all his available cash. The judge said that the former president’s “complete lack of contrition” bordered on pathological.
A New York judge on Friday handed Donald J. Trump a crushing defeat in his civil fraud case, finding the former president liable for conspiring to manipulate his net worth and ordering him to pay a penalty of nearly $355 million plus interest that could wipe out his entire stockpile of cash.
The decision by Justice Arthur F. Engoron caps a chaotic, yearslong case in which New York’s attorney general put Donald Trump’s fantastical claims of wealth on trial. With no jury, the power was in Justice Engoron’s hands alone, and he came down hard: The judge delivered a sweeping array of punishments that threatens the former president’s business empire as he simultaneously with four criminal prosecutions and seeks to regain the White House.
Justice Engoron barred Mr. Trump for three years from serving in top roles at any New York company, including portions of his own Trump Organization. He also imposed a two-year ban on the former president’s adult sons and ordered that they pay more than $4 million each. One of them, Eric Trump, is the company’s de facto chief executive, and the ruling throws into doubt whether any member of the family can run the business in the near term.
“Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological. They are accused only of inflating asset values to make more money. The documents prove this over and over again. This is a venial sin, not a mortal sin,” Engoron wrote in the court filing. “Yet, defendants are incapable of admitting the error of their ways.”
Video Source: ABC News (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggCCuQJH6sU)
The judge also ordered that they pay substantial interest, pushing the penalty for the former president to $450 million, according to the attorney general, Letitia James.
Speaking from his Florida estate, Mr Trump said he would appeal the ruling.
“A crooked New York state judge just ruled I have to pay a fine for $355m for having built a perfect company,” the former president said from Mar-a-Lago on Friday, calling the ruling a political witch hunt.
“It’s a very sad day for – in my opinion – the country.”
The climax of the case deepened the extraordinary legal morass facing Trump who is embroiled in multiple cases and faces the first of his criminal trials next month. The judgment portrays Trump, his adult sons and the Trump Organization, flouting business ethics, rules and laws to pull valuations for their property assets out of the air to get favorable loans, and then even more remarkably, refusing to accept the facts of their conduct when confronted with the evidence.
Practically, Engoron’s decision will impose severe financial and personal strain on Trump as he’s emerging as the almost certain Republican presidential nominee. While Trump boasts of being a billionaire many times over, it’s unclear if he has the liquidity to pay what he owes or if some of the “beautiful buildings” and golf resorts over which he often waxes fondly in campaign speeches are at risk. An emperor has no clothes moment that reveals the ex-president as less wealthy than he claims could threaten the mogul’s mystique on which he built his political brand and his self-identity.
Perhaps most concerning for Trump, Friday’s defeat suggests the shield of impunity that has allowed his rampaging political and business career is fraying. It comes only three weeks after a jury in a defamation case in Manhattan awarded the writer E. Jean Carroll $83 million in compensatory damages for public statements he made in 2019 disparaging her and denying her rape allegations.