Former US President Donald Trump.
Photo: DW / Deutsche Welle
The justice of new York imposed this Friday the 16th a fine on the former president of the US Donald Trump According to the verdict, he was fined almost $355 million (equivalent to about R$1.76 billion) and banned from conducting his business for three years.
“The court bans Donald Trump […] from serving as an officer or director of a New York corporation or other New York legal entity for a period of three years,” Judge Arthur Engoron wrote in his ruling, ordering the Republican tycoon to pay a fine of $354,868,768. Dollar.
Trump, who built his reputation as a real estate titan, was also banned from serving as a director or officer of any New York company for three years. However, the judge deviated from an earlier decision that would have led to the dissolution of the former president's companies.
Trump's lawyers have vowed to appeal. Lawyer Alina Habba called the verdict “blatant injustice” and “the culmination of a politically motivated witch hunt lasting several years.” She and Trump lawyer Christopher Kise said the ruling, if upheld, would harm the business environment.
Judge Arthur Engoron issued his ruling after a twoandahalfmonth trial in which the Republican presidential candidate waffled under oath and claimed he was the victim of a rigged legal system.
Trump and his companies were ordered to pay $355 million. His eldest sons, Trump Organization vice presidents Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, were each ordered to pay $4 million. Former CFO Allen Weisselberg was ordered to pay $1 million.
Engoron concluded that Trump and his codefendants took “no responsibility” for their actions and that experts who testified for the defense “simply denied reality.” The judge called the civil fraud at the heart of the trial a “venial sin, not a mortal sin.”
“You didn’t rob a bank at gunpoint. Donald Trump is no Bernard Madoff. Yet the defendants are unable to admit their mistake,” wrote Engoron, a Democrat. He said her “complete lack of remorse and remorse” bordered on the pathological.
“The frauds found here are striking and shock the conscience,” the judge added.
The harsh sentence was a victory for New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, who prosecuted Trump not just for simple bragging rights but for years of fraudulent practices in building his multinational collection of skyscrapers, golf courses and other properties that catapulted him to wealth persecuted, fame and White House.
Trump's lawyers had already said before the verdict that they would appeal. James sued Trump in 2022 under a state law that allows the investigation of ongoing business fraud.
The lawsuit accused Trump and his codefendants of routinely inflating their financial reports to create the illusion that their properties were more valuable than they actually were. Prosecutors said Trump exaggerated his wealth by as much as $3.6 billion in one year.
By appearing richer, Trump qualified for better loan terms, saved on interest and was able to complete projects he might not have otherwise completed, prosecutors said.
Before the trial even began, Engoron ruled that James had proven that Trump's financial reports were fraudulent. The judge ordered some Trump companies removed from his control and dissolved. An appeals court overturned this ruling.
In that earlier ruling, the judge concluded that Trump's financial reports, among other tricks, falsely stated that his Trump Tower apartment was nearly three times its actual size overvalued its MaraLago property in Palm Beach, Florida, based on the idea that the property could be developed for residential usealthough he had waived the rights to develop it for purposes other than a club.
Trump, one of 40 witnesses who testified at the trial, said that his financial reports actually underestimated his net worth and that the banks had done their own research and were happy with their dealings. “There was no victim. There was nothing,” Trump testified in November.
During the trial, Trump called the judge “extremely hostile” and the attorney general “a political mercenary.” In a sixminute diatribe during closing arguments in January, Trump proclaimed, “I am an innocent man” and called the case a “hoax on me.”
On Thursday, a judge confirmed that the trial in Trump's witness silencing case will begin March 25, and a judge in Atlanta heard debates over whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should be removed from his election interference case Georgia should be removed because she had a personal relationship with a special prosecutor she hired.
Those criminal charges do not appear to have hurt his path to the Republican presidential nomination, but civil suits have threatened him financially.
On January 26, a jury ordered Trump to pay writer E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million for defaming her after she accused him of sexually assaulting her in a Manhattan department store in the US in 2019 to have. 1990s. That's in addition to the $5 million a year the jury awarded Carroll in a related trial last year.
In 2022, the Trump Organization was convicted of tax fraud and fined $1.6 million in an unrelated criminal case for helping executives evade taxes on extravagant perks such as apartments and luxury cars in Manhattan. James asked the judge to impose a penalty of at least $370 million.
Engoron decided the case because neither side requested a jury and state law does not allow juries for this type of action. Because the case was civil and not criminal, there was no risk of prison time in the case.
James, who ran for office as a Trump critic and watchdog, began questioning his business practices in March 2019 after her former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, testified before Congress that Trump had made allegations in financial reports he provided to Deutsche Bank had exaggerated his assets when he tried to obtain financing to purchase the NFL's Buffalo Bills.
James' office had previously sued Trump for using his own charitable foundation to further his political and business interests. Trump was ordered to pay $2 million in fines to a number of charities and the foundation, the Trump Foundation, was closed.
Trump founded the Trump Organization in New York in 1981. He still owns the organization, but placed its assets in a revocable trust and resigned his positions as director, chairman and president of the company when he became president, leaving management of the company to Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.
When Trump left the White House in 2021, he did not return to a stated leadership position, but his children said he was involved in some decisions. Engoron had already appointed one person, retired federal judge Barbara Jones, to oversee the company. /AP