- Trump's fraud-trial verdict targets his cash, NY business address, and Trump Organization control.
- The verdict notes that Trump continued to commit fraud even while under investigation.
Donald Trump's fraud verdict targets three things he values dearly: his cash, his New York business address, and the Trump Organization steering wheel.
It'll take many months of appeals to get there. But if Friday's verdict is upheld, Trump must relinquish $355 million in ill-gotten gains, plus yet-tallied interest that could approach $100 million.
He'll be barred for three years from running a New York business, borrowing from a New York-registered bank, and buying commercial property anywhere in the state.
And a now-strengthened court-appointed monitor who, so far, no appeal effort has managed to dislodge, will continue to oversee Trump's finances.
These penalties — his punishment for a decade of fraud-filled financial statements he sent to banks and insurers — did not sneak up on the GOP frontrunner.
For the past five years, Trump has known he was going to be first probed, then sued, then put on trial for his financial frauds.
He's known he's been watched since March 2019, when New York Attorney General Letitia James sent her first blizzard of subpoenas snowing down on his banks, accountants, and assessors.
Yet Trump has spent these five years frauding like nobody's watching.
He dodged his subpoenas. He continued inflating his worth in financial statements by as much as $3.6 billion a year.
And even while a court-installed independent monitor watched these past 14 months, he still hid a transfer of $40 million, state Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron noted in Friday's verdict.
The verdict ratchets back many penalties James sought. Trump's properties won't be placed under receivership and sold, and he'll lose his Trump Organization steering wheel for three years rather than permanently.
But Trump's persisting penchant for fraud, even under an investigatory microscope for five years — means he'll be watched far more closely now.
Trump's monitor, the retired federal judge Barbara Jones — still in place despite his prior appeals — has for 14 months reviewed all of his company's financial disclosures to third parties after they were sent out.
Now, as the verdict orders, "the Trump Organization shall be required to obtain prior approval — not, as things are now, subsequent review — from Judge Jones before submitting any financial disclosure to a third party, so that such disclosure may be reviewed beforehand for material misrepresentations."
That means for at least the next three years, Jones will be checking the Trump Organization's math in advance.
This includes every financial disclosure to a bank, insurer, or potential buyer of his properties. That's the paperwork for his many branding deals, licensing deals, and corporate tax returns.
Jones will send any fuzzy math back for corrections. Meanwhile, Trump must continue, under the verdict, to give Jones 30 days' notice of any restructuring, refinancing, or selling of assets.
Otherwise, as Engoron noted in his verdict, Trump, his company, and his sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, "are likely to continue their fraudulent ways."
Knew he was being watched
The AG's office believes Trump knew he was under investigation in March 2019. That's when the AG served her first fraud-probe subpoena, demanding records from Trump's favorite lender, Deutsche Bank.
Two months later, Trump's outside accountants, Mazars USA, got a subpoena. Cushman-Wakefield, Trump's go-to assessor, got one a month later. Trump Organization lawyers met with the AG's office regarding these subpoenas throughout summer 2019.
Yet the following Halloween, the AG's office said, Trump still issued an intentionally inflated 2019 net-worth statement, claiming he was worth $6.1 billion, well over twice his actual worth. Donald Trump Jr. and the then-Trump Org CFO Allen Weisselberg certified the statement's accuracy.
Trump was still president in 2019 and otherwise occupied. But the judge found that Trump continued frauding over the next four years as a civilian, inflating his net worth in official banking documents even as the AG's investigation pressed forward.
In 2020, more AG subpoenas snowed down. The Trump Organization got one. So did the company's leadership, from Trump on down to Patrick Birney, an assistant finance guy, trial evidence showed.
Some fun 2020 deposition facts: responding to his subpoena, Birney memorably swore that Weisselberg, the Trump Org CFO, told him, "Donald likes to see it go up." And Weisselberg and Eric Trump invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 500 times each in their subpoena-ordered depositions.
Still, even as the AG's microscope focused ever tighter, the 2020 financial statement issued at year's end again more than doubled Trump's net worth, saying it was $4.7 billion rather than $2.2 billion, as officials say it was.
In 2021, Trump kept at it, the AG argued, even as Mazars publicly dropped Trump as a client and Weisselberg and the Trump Organization were indicted on payroll-tax fraud charges that a jury would convict on a year later.
"While the investigation was ongoing, defendants continued their efforts to actively conceal their fraud," state lawyers said in a filing last month.
That includes Trump "failing to turn over more than one million pages of documents" in defiance of an AG subpoena and "refusing to sit for testimony absent court order."
On October 29, 2021 — AG microscope be damned — Trump claimed that he was worth $4.5 billion, nearly $2 billion higher than his actual worth. And Eric Trump certified the claim as accurate.
"Defendants were aware of our investigation since the middle of March 2019," Andrew Amer, a lawyer for James, said in closings.
But over the next three years, "they issued three more statements of financial condition with the fraud continuing, while they knew they were under investigation for this activity."
Not his first fraud rodeo
The AG's lawyers noted that it wasn't even Trump's first fraud rodeo.
In previous years, Trump has settled allegations of fraud involving the Trump Foundation, Trump University, and the 2017 Inaugural Committee, Amer pointed out in closings.
None of these legal exposures — nor the AG's fraud lawsuit — slowed him down.
The same day James concluded her initial investigation and filed her massive Trump fraud lawsuit, on September 21, 2022, Trump incorporated "Trump Organization II" in what her office worried was an attempt to shift and protect assets.
Engoron, at this point, had already been presiding over the AG's fraud investigation for two years, repeatedly ordering Trump defendants to stop defying her subpoenas for their testimony and documents.
The judge quickly agreed with the AG's request for an independent monitor to oversee the Trump Organization, citing Trump's "demonstrated propensity to engage in persistent fraud."
Violations all over the place
Since her appointment just over a year ago, Jones has repeatedly criticized the Trump Organization's transparency and its sometimes-suspect money transfers.
Last August, she cited the company's "incomplete" data to lenders, accusing it of hiding in its reporting such liabilities as "refundable golf-club membership deposits."
In November — mid-trial — Jones dinged the company for failing to immediately disclose $40 million in cash transfers, money she said Trump used to pay $29 million in taxes and a $5 million civil judgment in the first E. Jean Carroll defamation case.
"It shows an inability to follow the law," Kevin Wallace, a lawyer for the New York AG's office, said during last month's closings.
And in January, Jones suggested that Trump hid an internal Trump Organization money transfer that amounts to a $48 million tax-free loan.
"Even after the Independent Monitor was in place, defendants were still incapable of complying with Court orders," the AG's lawyers wrote last month.
"In short," they added, Trump and Trump Organization leadership "have proven themselves incapable, time and again, of following the law."
But no outright fraud
Trump's lawyers have said in his defense that any discrepancies or requests for additional data have been promptly cleared up and that Jones never made any allegations of outright fraud.
"The monitor has issued five reports so far," Christopher Kise, Trump's attorney, said in the fraud trial's closing arguments last month.
"The word fraud does not appear in any one of those reports," Kise said.
But Jones is not authorized to accuse Trump of fraud, as she points out in her reports to the judge. She's just there to alert the court to anything suspicious. And there's been plenty of that.
Trump "submitted disclosures to third parties that fail to include significant liabilities," the verdict said, referring to Jones' findings.
Not only that, but "the internal accounting structure of the Trump Organization continues to be plagued by math and/or reporting errors," the verdict noted.
"There are no adequate internal controls over financial reporting in place at the Trump Organization to ensure that there will not continue to be misstatements and errors going forward."
Until now.
If Trump continues to fraud like nobody's watching, Jones and a yet-designated "Independent Director of Compliance" who will report to her can propose even more drastic oversight and punishment — whatever it takes "to keep defendants honest."
That includes, under the verdict, "the restructuring and potential dissolution" of Trump's properties.
And all this monitoring? That team of skeptical accountants with their noses in his books for at least the next three years? Trump will pay their salaries, on top of his $355 million verdict, plus interest.