New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron has ordered Donald Trump to pay over $350 million in Attorney General Letitia James’ civil business fraud case against the billionaire real estate mogul and one-term former U.S. president who is seeking another four years in the White House. Trump is also barred from operating a business in New York for three years, according to NBC News.
Engoron had already ruled in September that Trump for years had fraudulently increased the value of his properties to obtain better deals with banks and insurers.
The case has been described as the “most personal” for Trump, “that strikes at the heart of his family business and his identity as a successful businessman,” CNN’s Paula Reid commented ahead of the ruling Friday.
Attorney General James had asked Justice Engoron to require Trump to pay $370 million and to ban him from doing business in the state of New York. In her September, 2022, 222-page summons and complaint, James accused Trump and others named in the lawsuit of having “engaged in numerous acts of fraud and misrepresentation.” She says she filed the case after “a comprehensive three-year investigation … involving interviews with more than 65 witnesses and review of millions of pages of documents.”
“These acts of fraud and misrepresentation grossly inflated Mr. Trump’s personal net worth as reported in the Statements by billions of dollars and conveyed false and misleading impressions to financial counterparties about how the Statements were prepared. Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization used these false and misleading Statements repeatedly and persistently to induce banks to lend money to the Trump Organization on more favorable terms than would otherwise have been available to the company, to satisfy continuing loan covenants, and to induce insurers to provide insurance coverage for higher limits and at lower premiums.”
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The Associated Press in September reported on Engoron’s ruling: “Beyond mere bragging about his riches, Trump, his company and key executives repeatedly lied about them on his annual financial statements, reaping rewards such as favorable loan terms and lower insurance costs, Engoron found.”
Justice Engoron’s ruling had been expected by January 31, just days after a federal judge ordered Trump to pay journalist E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million in her civil defamation lawsuit against the ex-president. Bloomberg had reported the “pair of major legal verdicts in New York … risk wiping out most — if not all — of the cash the billionaire says he has on hand, a potential blow to the presidential candidate whose persona is tied up with financial success and wealth.”
Some have suggested the two recent judgments might have the potential to force Trump to seek bankruptcy protections.
Trump, who is also facing 91 federal and state criminal felony charges, was handed even more bad news in the New York civil business fraud case last month when “former federal judge Barbara Jones, the court-appointed special monitor in Donald Trump’s New York business fraud case … planted a financial bombshell that legal experts say suggests Trump lied knowingly and repeatedly on his federal financial disclosures about a major loan that never existed—and may have evaded taxes on $48 million in income,” The Daily Beast reported.
That could have had an impact on how much Justice Engoron ordered Trump to pay, and is thought to have been at least part of the reason for his delayed ruling.
Though reportedly still a billionaire, CBS News reported in October Trump was dropped from the Forbes 400 list of richest people run the world.
The full ruling is here.
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