New York: Arthur Engoron, a New York judge has issued a harsh ruling against former President Donald Trump and his real estate company. The ruling fined Trump $350 million and barred him and his eldest sons from major New York companies for the next several years.
The fraud conviction is a devastating blow to a man who saw himself as a successful real estate mogul and built a political career around that reputation. Engoron fined the defendants $364 million, which is close to the $370 million sought by the attorney general’s office when the case was closed in January.
The bulk of the fine comes from two calculations, $168 million in interest on several Trump loans and $126 million in profits from the sale of an old post office building in Washington. In his ruling, Engoron noted that Trump profited by paying lower interest rates while working with lenders such as Deutsche Bank, who believed Trump had high net worth because of his financial statements.
An expert witness, Michael McCarthy, testified at trial for prosecutors that he estimated that Trump saved $168 million in lower interest rates as his assets increased in value. Engoron admitted the amount, saying “defendants’ fraud saved them” from having to pay high interest. Another $126 million in fines came from the “ill-gotten profits” Trump made when he sold the old post office building in 2022. Trump was able to buy the hotel-turned-building by using inflated financial statements.
Engoron remarked in the ruling that, “As with so many Trump real estate deals, the Old Post Office contract was obtained through the use of false SFCs (no false SFCs, no deal).” The judge also fined Don Jr. and Eric Trump $4 million individually for distributions of personal profits from the sale of the old post office building.
The final $1 million fine is for Allen Weisselberg, Trump’s former finance chief, who was paid $2 million in a severance agreement with the Trump Organization. Engoron quoted that because Weisselberg was a “critical player in nearly every instance of fraud, it would be inequitable to allow him to profit from his actions by covering up defendants’ misdeeds.”
Prosecutors wanted Trump permanently banned from the New York real estate industry, similar to how entrepreneur and pharma bro Martin Shkreli was banned from the pharmaceutical industry in 2022. Engoron ultimately barred Trump from leading his company or any New York-based company for 3 years, saving him from a permanent ban. Trump’s sons Eric and Don Jr. were banned from running the company for two years. Trump and the Trump Organization have also been instructed not to apply for loans from any financial institution registered in New York for three years.
The judge overturned its pre-trial ruling ordering the cancellation of the Trump Organization’s business certificates, a move that would have ended its ability to continue operations in New York. Donald Trump spent hours trying to convince a New York judge that he was not guilty of financial fraud.
Engoron wrote in his 92-page ruling that the former president “rarely responded to the questions asked, and he frequently interjected long, irrelevant speeches on issues far beyond the scope of the trial. His refusal to answer the questions directly, or in some cases, at all, severely compromised his credibility.” In his judgment, the evidence provided by Trump’s eldest son, who has led the Trump Organization since his father entered the White House in 2017, is less fair.
In the ruling, the judge rejected some of the key arguments Trump’s lawyers had made throughout the trial. The first was that lenders did not rely on financial statements when dealing with Trump. It was a recurring argument throughout the trial, including when Trump and his children took the witness stand.
Trump’s lawyers have made a similar argument, often saying that the reported financial figures are immaterial or that they don’t matter in the financial statements. Trump said in his testimony that lenders know how wealthy he is and that’s what matters.
In his ruling, Engoron appeared particularly frustrated with Trump’s materialist arguments, saying, that “faced with clear evidence of a misstatement, a person can always shout that ‘it’s immaterial.”
Trump and his sons testified that it was their outside accountants’ job to correct the financial statements. But Engoron remarked that “overwhelming evidence adduced at trial demonstrating that [the accounting firms] relied on the Trump Organization, not vice versa, to be truthful and accurate, and they had a right to do so”.
The judge noted that, “Absolute perfection, including with numbers, exists only in heaven. If fraud is insignificant, then, like most things in life, it just does not matter. But these frauds were not merely significant: they leap off the page and shock the conscience.”
“In the face of this, what truly rankled Engoron was Trump and his allies’ refusal to acknowledge almost all the errors at the heart of this case. “Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological. They are accused only of inflating asset values to make more money,” the judge wrote.
Trump remained defiant even after the verdict. The former president called the ruling a “Complete and total sham,” and falsely claimed his $354.9 million fine was “based on nothing other than having built a great company.”
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