A court has ordered The Trump Organization to pay $1.6 million after being convicted of payroll-tax fraud last December in New York state.

While the fine is the maximum allowed under state law, the fine is less than the millions the company allegedly saved by paying its executives off-the-book perks like luxury cars and apartments, Insider reported.

“I want to be very clear, we don’t think that is enough,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said of the state’s maximum fines for financial fraud. “Our laws in this state need to change in order to capture this type of decade-plus, systemic, egregious fraud.”

Even Judge Juan Merchan acknowledged that the fine “may have limited impact on a multibillion corporation,” according to the New York Times.

During the trial, defense attorneys claimed that Trump family members at the top of the company were completely clueless about the organization’s financial misdealings.

The Trump Organization’s ex-CFO Allen Weisselberg essentially took the fall for the misdeeds and was sentenced to five months in Riker’s Island prison and a $2 million fine as a result.

The organization’s attorneys have pledged to appeal the decision. However, Trump himself may find himself in hot water if prosecutors determined that he cheated on his past taxes, which were released just two weeks ago.

In late December, the House House Ways and Means Committee released Trump’s tax returns from 2015 through 2020. In three of the six years, Trump’s taxable income was zero. This means he paid no income tax in three of the years, and just $750 in 2016.

Investigative financial journalist David Cay Johnston wrote that Trump definitely cheated on his taxes, lowering his owed income taxes by claiming “huge business expenses despite having zero revenue.”  Trump also did this in his 1984 tax return, resulting in two judges ruling that he had committed civil tax fraud, Johnston noted.

“That Trump persisted in using the same fraudulent technique in six years of recent tax returns is powerful evidence of mens rea or criminal intent,” the reporter wrote. “This device is not Trump’s most lucrative tax cheating technique, but it is the easiest for jurors to understand should Trump be indicted on tax charges.”

Greater scrutiny of Trump’s taxes could find that he committed other shady dealings “including charitable deductions that may be bogus or overstated; treating personal expenses as business expenses; loans to his three older children that may be to escape gift taxes; and reporting almost $5 million of capital contributions as tax-deductible business expenses,” Johnston wrote.

Because there’s no statute of limitations on civil tax fraud, Trump could eventually be pursued for back-owed taxes even if he’s never indicted for fraud.

Viewers of Fox & Friends were treated to a dose of the truth on Thursday when the show admitted that President Donald Trump has “baselessly” and “falsely” claimed that the 2020 election was rigged.

The message to Fox News viewers appeared on the network’s ticker graphic that is displayed at the bottom of the screen.

“President Trump phoned into a meeting organized by Republicans in Pennsylvania Wed., baseless claiming that the election was ‘rigged’ and falsely claiming that he won it ‘by a lot,’” the Fox News ticker reported. “Most of Trump’s legal efforts to challenge voting procedures in PA, MI and other states have been thrown out and his campaign has not produced sufficient evidence to back up claims of widespread voter fraud.”

The ticker continued: “At the hearing Wed., Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani claimed Trump had potentially won VA, when in fact the state’s vote count shows Trump lost VA by over 450,000 votes.”

According to the Fox News report, “states where the Trump campaign has contested results, including GA, MI, PA and NV, have all either certified or moved closer to certifying their results in the past week, further confirming President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.”

Read the ticker in the Fox News video below.

President Donald Trump was asked an unusual question during his supposed “news” briefing Thursday evening.

“After three and a half years, do you regret at all, all the lying that you’ve done to the American people?” HuffPost White House correspondent S.V. Dáte asked. The briefing was carried live on Fox News, but not on MSNBC or CNN.

“All the what?” a startled President Trump asked.

“All the lying, all the dishonesties,” Dáte repeated.

“And who is that?” Trump, still stunned, asked.

“You have done,” Dáte repeated again.

“Ah… Go ahead, please,” Trump said, pointing to another reporter, refusing to answer the original question.

Watch:

Wow. A reporter (I'm not sure who he is) asks Trump, "after three and a half years, do you regret all the lying you've done to the American people?" Trump quickly moves on to the next question. pic.twitter.com/DHn3UvXHnN

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 13, 2020

Minutes earlier, Dáte posted these important tweets:

Again, this is purely a campaign speech, attacking Joe Biden and nothing else so far, reading off some speech on the lectern.

Someone wrote those remarks. If WH employees have written those or vetted those, they are violating the Hatch Act.

— S.V. Dáte (@svdate) August 13, 2020