A judge on Tuesday ruled that former US president Donald Trump committed fraud for years while building his real-estate empire and ordered some of his companies removed from his control and dissolved.
Judge Arthur Engoron, ruling in a civil lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, found that Trump and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing loans.
Engoron ordered that some of Trump’s business licenses be rescinded as punishment, making it difficult or impossible for them to do business in New York, and said he would continue to have an independent monitor oversee Trump Organization operations.
Photo: Reuters
If not successfully appealed, the order would strip Trump of his authority to make strategic and financial decisions over some of his key properties in the state.
Trump, in a series of statements, railed against the decision, calling it “un-American” and part of an ongoing plot to damage his campaign to return to the White House.
“My Civil rights have been violated, and some Appellate Court, whether federal or state, must reverse this horrible, un-American decision,” he wrote on Truth Social.
He said that his company had “done a magnificent job for New York State” and “done business perfectly,” calling it “A very sad Day for the New York State System of Justice!”
Trump’s lawyer Christopher Kise said that the legal team would appeal, calling the decision “completely disconnected from the facts and governing law.”
Trump, his company and key executives repeatedly lied on financial statements, reaping rewards such as favorable loan terms and lower insurance costs, Engoron ruled.
Those tactics contravened the law, the judge said, rejecting Trump’s contention that a disclaimer on the financial statements absolved him of any wrongdoing.
“In defendants’ world, rent-regulated apartments are worth the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unrestricted land; restrictions can evaporate into thin air; a disclaimer by one party casting responsibility on another party exonerates the other party’s lies,” Engoron wrote in his 35-page ruling. “That is a fantasy world, not the real world.”
Manhattan prosecutors had looked into bringing criminal charges over the matter, but declined to do so, leaving James to sue Trump and seek penalties that aim to disrupt his and his family’s ability to do business.
Engoron’s ruling, in a phase of the case known as summary judgement, resolves the key claim in James’ lawsuit, but several others remain.
He is to decide on those claims and James’ request for US$250 million in penalties at a trial scheduled to start on Monday next week.
Trump’s lawyers have asked an appeals court for a delay.
“Today, a judge ruled in our favor and found that Donald Trump and the Trump Organization engaged in years of financial fraud,” James said in a statement. “We look forward to presenting the rest of our case at trial.”
Trump’s lawyers, in their own summary judgement bid, had asked the judge to throw out the case, arguing that there was no evidence that the public was harmed by Trump’s actions.
They also argued that many of the allegations in the lawsuit were barred by the statute of limitations.
Engoron equated the defense’s arguments to the plot of the film Groundhog Day, saying that he had addressed them earler.
He fined five defense lawyers US$7,500 each as punishment for “engaging in repetitive, frivolous” arguments, but denied James’ request to sanction Trump and other defendants.
James sued Trump and the Trump Organization a year ago, accusing them of routinely inflating the value of assets such as skyscrapers, golf courses and his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, padding his bottom line by billions.
Engoron found that Trump consistently overvalued Mar-a-Lago, inflating its value on one financial statement by as much as 2,300 percent.
The judge also said that Trump lied about the size of his Manhattan apartment.
“A discrepancy of this order of magnitude, by a real-estate developer sizing up his own living space of decades, can only be considered fraud,” Engoron wrote.
Trump’s son Eric Trump wrote on X that his father’s claims about Mar-a-Lago were correct, saying that the Palm Beach estate is “speculated to be worth well over a billion dollars making it arguably the most valuable residential property in the country.”
Eric Trump called the ruling and the lawsuit “an attempt to destroy my father and kick him out of New York.”
Under the ruling, limited liability companies that control some of Donald Trump’s key properties, such as 40 Wall Street, would be dissolved and authority over how to run them handed over to a receiver.
Donald Trump would lose his authority over whom to hire or fire, whom to rent office space to, and other key decisions.
“The decision seeks to nationalize one of the most successful corporate empires in the United States and seize control of private property all while acknowledging there is zero evidence of any default, breach, late payment or any complaint of harm,” Kise said after the decision.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to