New York AG seeks $370M from Trump
NEW YORK — New York state lawyers increased their request for penalties to over $370 million Friday in Donald Trump’s civil business fraud trial, while his defense argued that 10-plus weeks of testimony produced no evidence of fraudulent intentions or ill-gotten gains.
Both sides highlighted their takeaways from the trial in court filings ahead of closing arguments, set for Thursday. Mr. Trump is expected to attend, though plans could change.
It will be the final chance for state and defense lawyers to make their case in a lawsuit that is consequential for the leading Republican presidential hopeful even while he fights four criminal cases in various courts.
The New York civil case could end up barring him from doing business in the state where he built his real estate empire, and state Attorney General Letitia James is seeking the $370 million penalty, plus interest — up from a pretrial figure of $250 million, nudged to over $300 million during the proceeding.
The amount reflects what the state says were windfalls from wrongdoing, chiefly $199 million in profits from property sales and $169 million in savings on interest rates, as calculated by an investment banking expert hired by Ms. James’ office.
Ms. James argues that Mr. Trump got attractive rates on loans and insurance because of the wealth he claimed on his personal “statements of financial condition,” or “SFCs” for short. And that wealth was vastly inflated, according to the lawsuit, which accuses Mr. Trump, his company and key executives of deceiving banks and insurers.
The suit alleges that the documents gave exorbitant values for golf courses, hotels, and more, including Trump’s former home in his namesake tower in New York and his current home at the Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla.
“The conclusion that defendants intended to defraud when preparing and certifying Trump’s SFCs is inescapable,” Kevin Wallace, a lawyer in James’ office, wrote in a filing Friday. “The myriad deceptive schemes they employed to inflate asset values and conceal facts were so outrageous that they belie innocent explanation.”
The defendants, including his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, deny any wrongdoing.
The former president asserts that his financial statements actually came in billions of dollars low, and that any overestimations — such as valuing his Trump Tower penthouse at nearly three times its actual size — were mere mistakes and made no difference in the overall picture of his fortune.
He also says the documents are essentially legally bulletproof because they said the numbers weren’t audited, among other caveats. Recipients understood them as simply starting points for their own analyses, the defense says.
None of his lenders testified that they wouldn’t have made the loans or would have charged more interest if his financial statements had shown different numbers, defense lawyers wrote in a filing Friday for Mr. Trump, his Trump Organization and some executives.
The state “adduced no factual evidence from any witness that the gains were ill-gotten,” attorneys Michael Madaio and Christopher Kise wrote. Nor, they said, was there proof that insurers were ripped off.
Separately, defense lawyers argued that claims against Executive Vice Presidents Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. should be dismissed because they never had “anything more than a peripheral knowledge or involvement in the creation, preparation, or use of” their father’s financial statements.
The sons relied on the work of other Trump Organization executives and an outside accounting firm that prepared those documents, attorneys Clifford Robert and Michael Farina said, echoing the scions’ own testimony.
Their father also took the stand and made a stream of comments in the courthouse hallway. He painted the case as a political maneuver by Ms. James, Judge Arthur Engoron and other Democrats, saying they’re abusing the legal system to try to cut off his chances of winning back the White House this year.
The verdict is up to the judge, because Ms. James brought the case under a state law that doesn’t allow for a jury. Judge Engoron has said he hopes to decide by the end of this month.