The Trump fraud trial verdict goes well beyond ordering the ex-president to pay $355 million. Here's what the ruling means.
Feb 18, 2024, 00:24 IST
- Trump, his eldest sons, and the Trump Organization must repay $364 million from a decade of fraud.
- Friday's verdict also bars Trump from running a New York business for three years.
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In a scathing verdict that punishes a decade of deceit, the judge in Donald Trump's New York civil-fraud case on Friday slammed the GOP frontrunner, his two eldest sons, and his company with a nearly $364 million cash penalty."The frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience," the verdict by the New York Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron, who has presided over the case for more than three years, said.While Trump is personally on the hook for almost $355 million of that penalty, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump must pay $4 million each, and the former Trump CFO Allen Weisselberg must pay $1 million.But the verdict hits way beyond just Trump's wallet. It targets his real-estate and golf-resort empire, the Trump Organization, in two ways that Trump has pushed against for years.First, the verdict wrests control of the company further from the former president and his two eldest sons, leaving major company decisions to a yet-named "independent director of compliance" who'll operate under Trump's court-appointed monitor's continuing watch.Second, it sets a three-year ban on Trump running the Trump Organization or any other business in the city and state where he made his name — and where he first seized a national spotlight as a brash real-estate mogul. For Trump, it's the commercial equivalent of being run out of town on a rail.Significantly — and this is a big silver lining for Trump — the verdict reverses the most unfriendly elements of the judge's pre-trial "corporate death penalty" judgment from September.He no longer has to surrender all of the Trump Organization's New York operating licenses, and the verdict does not mention the forced sale of any Trump properties.The verdict caps a five-year effort by the office of New York State Attorney General Letitia James.On Friday afternoon, James issued a statement celebrating the verdict.She said that Trump has engaged in fraud for years to enrich his own family and company.Now, he and his codefendants will have to pay more than $450 million, including interest."While he may have authored the 'Art of the Deal,' our case revealed that his business was based on the art of the steal," she said.Trump is expected to immediately appeal, likely putting these and other punishments from the 92-page verdict on ice well past the November election.But in the coming weeks, Trump will still have to spend millions on a surety bond — a bond guaranteeing performance of a contract or obligation — to guarantee he can pay whatever dollar figure, plus interest, an appellate court ultimately upholds.Interest also applies to the penalties, potentially adding millions more to his ultimate verdict price tag."When confronted at trial with the statements, defendants' fact and expert witnesses simply denied reality, and defendants failed to accept responsibility or to impose internal controls to prevent future recurrences," Engoron wrote Friday.The verdict holds Trump civilly liable, based on Engoron's three-month Manhattan bench trial, for leading a conspiracy to commit business and insurance fraud with help from his two eldest sons and a pair of long-standing Trump Organization executives."Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological," Engoron wrote."They are accused only of inflating asset values to make more money," the verdict said."The documents prove this over and over again. This is a venial sin, not a mortal sin," he added. "Defendants did not commit murder or arson. 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."In a statement, a Trump Organization spokesperson decried the verdict as a "gross miscarriage of justice.""Every member of the New York business community, no matter the industry, should be gravely concerned with this gross overreach and brazen attempt by the Attorney General to exert limitless power where no private or public harm has been established," the spokesperson said in the statement. "If allowed to stand, this ruling will only further expedite the continuing exodus of companies from New York."Read Friday's verdict here."Today, justice has been served. This is a tremendous victory for this state, this nation, and for everyone who believes that we all must play by the same rules — even former presidents," James said in her statement Friday. "When powerful people cheat to get better loans, it comes at the expense of honest and hardworking people," James continued. "Everyday Americans cannot lie to a bank to get a mortgage to buy a home, and if they did, our government would throw the book at them. There simply cannot be different rules for different people.