New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron’s 92-page ruling fining Donald Trump approximately $364 million includes the jurist’s scathing observations about Trump and his executives’ practices.
In an almost literary section of his ruling titled, “Refusal to Admit Error,” Justice Engoron writes, “Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological.”
“The English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744) first declared, ‘To err is human, to forgive is divine.’ Defendants apparently are of a different mind. After some four years of investigation and litigation, the only error (‘inadvertent,’ of course) that they acknowledge is the tripling of the size of the Trump Tower Penthouse, which cannot be gainsaid. 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,” Engoron writes in the section, as pointed put by Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern. “This is a venial sin, not a mortal sin. 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. Instead, they adopt a ‘See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’ posture that the evidence belies.”
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“This Court is not constituted to judge morality; it is constituted to find facts and apply the law. In this particular case, in applying the law to the facts, the Court intends to protect the integrity of the financial marketplace and, thus, the public as a whole. Defendants’ refusal to admit error—indeed, to continue it, according to the Independent Monitor—constrains this Court to conclude that they will engage in it going forward unless judicially restrained.”
“Indeed, Donald Trump testified that, even today, he does not believe the Trump Organization needed to make any changes based on the facts that came out during this trial.”
CNN’s Caitlin Collins commented, “I think that [para]graph really sums up this entire thing.” She adds it explains “why we are seeing this large of a number,” referring to the $364 million fine.
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