Trump ordered to pay $355m in NY civil fraud case
NEW YORK — Donald Trump must pay $354.9 million in penalties for fraudulently overstating his net worth to dupe lenders, according to a New York judge ruling, handing the former US president another legal setback in a civil case that imperils his real estate empire.
Justice Arthur Engoron, in a sharply worded decision issued after a contentious three-month trial in Manhattan on Friday, also banned Trump, who is running to regain the presidency this year, from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation for three years. Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba said she would appeal.
Engoron canceled his prior ruling from September ordering the “dissolution” of companies that control pillars of Trump’s real estate empire, saying on Friday that this was no longer necessary because he is appointing an independent monitor and compliance director to oversee Trump’s businesses.
Trump and the other defendants in the case, Engoron wrote in the ruling, “are incapable of admitting the error of their ways”.
“Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological,” Engoron wrote.
The lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James accused Trump and his family businesses of overstating his net worth by as much as $3.6 billion a year over a decade to fool bankers into giving him better loan terms. Trump, who faces criminal charges in four other cases, has called the lawsuit a political vendetta by James, a Democrat.
In posts on his social media platform, Trump called Engoron “crooked”, and the case against him “election interference” and a “witch hunt”.
Trump on Saturday lashed out at the New York judge, telling thousands of supporters at a campaign rally the decision was an “election interference ploy”.
Addressing supporters for the first time since Engoron’s ruling, Trump made the unsubstantiated claim that the judge was part of a “left-wing” conspiracy aimed at stopping him from becoming president again.
The former Republican president, the front-runner for his party’s White House nomination, told a crowd in Michigan that “these repulsive abuses of power are not just an attack on me, they are an attack on all Americans”.
Trump also repeated his lie that his 2020 election defeat to Democratic US President Joe Biden was due to election fraud.
Trump’s adult sons, Donald Jr and Eric, also were defendants in the case. The judge ordered them to pay $4 million apiece. Former Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg, who pleaded guilty to tax fraud in a separate criminal case, was ordered to pay $1 million and barred for life from managing any New York company’s finances.
The judge’s decision could deal a major blow to Trump’s real estate empire even as the businessmanturned-politician leads by a wide margin in the race for the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic President Joe Biden in the Nov 5 US election.