Judge fines Trump more than $350 million in civil fraud case

(The Center Square) – A New York judge fined Donald Trump more than $350 million in the civil business fraud trial and barred the former president from serving as an officer on any New York corporation or applying for a loan within New York for three years.

Judge Arthur Engoron made his decision Friday after a trial that began Oct. 2 and ended Dec. 13. More than 40 witnesses testified at trial. Trump said he plans to appeal the verdict.

The ruling also stipulates that the former president’s sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., can’t serve as an officer or director of any New York corporation for two years. The judge also fined each of Trump’s sons $4 million.

Trump called Engoron “crooked” and said the latest verdict an example of election interference.

“The Justice System in New York State, and America as a whole, is under assault by partisan, deluded, biased Judges and Prosecutors. Racist, Corrupt A.G. Tish James has been obsessed with “Getting Trump” for years, and used Crooked New York State Judge Engoron to get an illegal, unAmerican judgment against me, my family, and my tremendous business,” Trump posted on his social media platform. “I helped New York City during its worst of times, and now, while it is overrun with Violent Biden Migrant Crime, the Radicals are doing all they can to kick me out.”

He continued: “A Crooked New York State Judge, working with a totally Corrupt Attorney General who ran on the basis of ‘I will get Trump,’ before knowing anything about me or my company, has just fined me $355 Million based on nothing other than having built a GREAT COMPANY. ELECTION INTERFERENCE. WITCH HUNT.”

The New York Attorney General’s office claimed that Trump and his top managers fraudulently misrepresented the financial condition of some of his companies from 2011 through 2021.

Trump inflated his personal net worth by billions of dollars and Trump and his companies used the inflated net worth to get banks to lend him money on better terms than he should have been given, the AG claimed.

In one instance, the AG claimed a bank appraised a Trump property at 40 Wall Street at $220 million in 2012 but Trump’s team listed that property’s worth at $527 million.

In September, Judge Engoron found the Trump and his companies had engaged in years of financial fraud.

“Even in the world of high finance, this Court cannot endorse a proposition that finds a misstatement of at least $812 million dollars to be ‘immaterial,” the judge wrote in September. “Defendants have failed to identify any authority for the notion that discrepancies of the magnitude demonstrated here could be considered immaterial.”

The New York Times reported that Trump will appeal the financial penalty.

By Tom Gantert | The Center Square