Former President Donald Trump and his associates were found liable by a New York court on Friday for committing decades of business fraud through his real estate empire, the Trump Organization, and a court ordered them to pay roughly $364 million in penalties.
New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron’s ruling ordered Trump and his companies to pay millions of dollars to the state, while his adult children and other associates under the Trump Organization were ordered to pay additional fees in the millions. Engoron, a Democrat, barred Trump from “serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation or other legal entity in New York” for three years, according to the ruling.
Trump’s sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, were found liable for $4,013,024 each and are similarly banned from doing business in New York for two years.
Trump, the Republican frontrunner for the 2024 presidential race, is also barred from applying for “loans from any financial institution chartered by or registered with the New York Department of Financial Services for a period of three years,” which could complicate his stated effort to appeal civil penalties against him in other cases. However, Trump won’t have to pay out the money as the appeals process plays out over the civil fraud verdict.
Trump responded to the verdict on Friday, calling James “totally Corrupt” and saying that the “Justice System in New York State, and America as a Whole, is under assault by partisan, deluded, biased Judges and Prosecutors.”
James issued a press release, saying that when “powerful people cheat to get better loans, it comes at the expense of honest and hardworking people.”
“Today, justice has been served,” she added.
The decision comes after a monthslong civil trial over a complaint from New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, alleging that Trump, his two adult sons, and two Trump Organization executives committed business fraud through years of false statements aimed at securing more favorable loans and other financial terms. James accused them of doing this in part by exaggerating the value of some of Trump’s most prized assets, such as the Trump Tower in Manhattan.
Engoron likened the civil fraud at the core of the trial to a “venial sin, not a mortal sin.”
“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,” wrote Engoron, adding that their “complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological.”
Ahead of the trial, Engoron found the defendants liable for most of James’s claims, and the trial was largely intended to assess penalties. He determined that Trump’s statements had wrongly claimed his Trump Tower penthouse was nearly three times its actual size and that he overvalued his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, on the basis that the property could be developed for residential use, despite that Trump surrendered rights to develop it for any other uses besides a club.
In addition to asking that the court shut down Trump’s business operations in New York, James sought $370 million in damages. Engoron’s fines to Trump and his associates were just short of James’s ask, though she had previously only sought $250 million before she said additional evidence from the trial warranted additional fees.
The trial featured testimony from more than 40 witnesses, including from Trump himself. Closing arguments were held on Jan. 11, and the judge decided the case because juries are not allowed on this type of lawsuit and neither James’s office nor Trump’s lawyers asked for one.
The former president made several appearances in New York for the trial, including to testify as a witness in November during what became a blockbuster day in court. In an entirely unconventional witness testimony, Trump blasted James and Engoron under oath from the stand and condemned the trial as “very unfair” while being asked direct questions about the case.
Two of Trump’s attorneys who handled the case, Chris Kise and Alina Habba, slammed the decision on Friday, with Kise likening the ruling to a “corporate ‘death penalty.'”
“Legal cases are supposed to be decided based on the application of established legal principles to the actual evidence,” Kise wrote in a lengthy statement. “During 44 days of trial, not one witness, not one complaint, and not one victim supported the Attorney General’s manufactured claims of ‘fraud’. Moreover, the evidence established President Trump’s net worth far exceeded what was reported in his financial statements. Even the bankers actually involved in the loans testified there was nothing misleading, there was no fraud, and the transactions were all highly profitable.”
Habba said the “manifest injustice” that Trump received on Friday was the culmination of a multiyear effort by James intended to “take down Donald Trump.”
“Given the grave stakes, we trust that the Appellate Division will overturn this egregious verdict and end this relentless persecution against my clients,” Habba said.
Engoron’s decision comes just weeks after Trump was ordered by a federal court jury in Manhattan to pay $83.3 million in damages to advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in a second civil defamation trial related to his denial of her sexual assault claim that dated back to the mid-1990s.
Trump has said he would appeal any judgment made against him in the business fraud trial and has likewise vowed to appeal a jury’s order to pay Carroll $5.5 million from the first defamation trial in May, as well as the more recent defamation verdict.
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If both defamation verdicts and Engoron’s order are upheld after the expected appeals process, Trump could stand to lose up to $450 million from the three cases combined.
Trump was last in New York on Thursday for a hearing over one of four criminal indictments he faces. In Manhattan, he faces a 34-count indictment over alleged hush money payments made to a porn star to silence her claims of an alleged affair, which the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said amounted to an effort to interfere in the 2016 election. A judge ordered the trial in that case to commence on March 25.
