- Trump, his eldest sons, and Trump Org must pay back $364 million paocketed through a decade of fraud.
- Friday’s verdict also bans Trump from running a business in New York for three years — including Trump Org.
- Trump’s frauds “leap off the page and shock the conscience,” the judge wrote.
In a scathing verdict that punishes a decade of deceit, the judge in Donald Trump’s New York civil fraud case on Friday slammed the GOP frontrunner, his two eldest sons, and his company with a nearly $364 million cash penalty.
“The frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience,” said the verdict by New York Supreme Court Arthur Engoron, who has presided over the case for more than three years.
While Trump is personally on the hook for almost $355 million of that penalty, Donald Trump, Jr., and Eric Trump must pay $4 million each. And former Trump CFO Allen Weisselberg $1 million.
But the verdict hits way beyond just Trump’s wallet. It targets his real-estate and golf resort empire, the Trump Organization, and does so in two ways that Trump has pushed against for years.
First, the verdict wrests control of the company further away from the former president and his two eldest sons, leaving major company decisions to a yet-named, “independent director of compliance” who’ll operate under the continuing watch of his existing court-appointed monitor.
Second, it sets a three-year ban on Trump running Trump Org or any other business in the city and state where he made his name — and where he first seized a national spotlight as a brash real-estate mogul. For Trump, it’s the commercial equivalent of being run out of town on a rail.
Significantly — and this is a big silver lining for Trump — the verdict reverses the most unfriendly elements of the judge’s pre-trial “corporate death penalty” judgment from September.
He no longer has to surrender all of Trump Organization’s New York operating licenses. And the verdict makes no mention of the forced sale of any Trump properties.
The verdict caps a five-year effort by the office of state Attorney General Letitia James.
On Friday afternoon, James issued a statement celebrating the verdict.
She said that Trump has for years engaged in fraud to enrich his own family and company.
Now, he and his codefendants will have to pay more than $450 million, including interest.
“While he may have authored the ‘Art of the Deal,’ our case revealed that his business was based on the art of the steal,” she said.
Trump is expected to immediately appeal, likely putting these and other punishments from the 92-page verdict on ice well past the November election.
But Trump will still have to spend millions on a surety bond in the coming weeks, to guarantee he can pay whatever dollar figure an appellate court ultimately upholds, plus interest.
Interest also applies to the penalties themselves, potentially adding millions of dollars more to his ultimate verdict price tag.
“When confronted at trial with the statements, defendants’ fact and expert witnesses simply denied reality, and defendants failed to accept responsibility or to impose internal controls to prevent future recurrences,” Judge Engoron wrote Friday.
The verdict holds Trump civilly liable, based on Engoron’s three-month Manhattan bench trial, for leading a conspiracy to commit business and insurance fraud with help from his two eldest sons and a pair of longstanding Trump Org executives.
“Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological,” the judge wrote.
“They are accused only of inflating asset values to make more money,” the judge said.
“The documents prove this over and over again. This is a venial sin, not a mortal sin,” he added. “Defendants did not commit murder or arson. They did not rob a bank at gunpoint. Donald Trump is not Bernard Madoff. Yet, defendants are incapable of admitting the error of their ways.”
In a statement, a Trump Organization spokesperson decried the verdict as a “gross miscarriage of justice.”
“Every member of the New York business community, no matter the industry, should be gravely concerned with this gross overreach and brazen attempt by the Attorney General to exert limitless power where no private or public harm has been established,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “If allowed to stand, this ruling will only further expedite the continuing exodus of companies from New York.”
“Today, justice has been served. This is a tremendous victory for this state, this nation, and for everyone who believes that we all must play by the same rules — even former presidents,” James said in her statement Friday.
“When powerful people cheat to get better loans, it comes at the expense of honest and hardworking people,” James continued. “Everyday Americans cannot lie to a bank to get a mortgage to buy a home, and if they did, our government would throw the book at them. There simply cannot be different rules for different people.
Some lesser penalties
In addition to the above, the verdict bans Trump and the Trump Organization from borrowing from a New York bank or purchasing real estate in the state for three years. James had asked for a five-year ban on such buying and borrowing in her lawsuit.
Donald Trump, Jr., and Eric Trump are banned from running a New York business for two years. James had asked for five-year bans for the brothers.
And it bans the two former executives, ex-CFO Allen Weisselberg and ex-Controller Jeff McConney, from controlling the finances of another New York company.
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