A judge is expected to rule on whether Donald Trump should pay a $370m fine in his New York fraud trial and face a lifetime ban from the New York real estate industry.
The New York attorney general’s office sued Trump for inflating the value of his assets on government financial statements. Trump’s adult sons, Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump, and two former Trump Organization executives, Allen Weisselberg and Jeff McConney, are also defendants in the case.
The New York AG’s office initially asked for $250m in disgorgement, or the amount of money that was wrongfully profited after Trump fudged his net worth. In their written closing arguments in January, prosecutors ended up bumping up their disgorgement figure to $370m.
Prosecutors are also asking the judge, Arthur Engoron, to ban Trump from the New York real estate industry. It’s a similar punishment to that which a New York federal court meted out to “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli after he was found guilty of price-gouging a life-saving drug. Prosecutors in the Trump case cited the Shkreli ruling as an example of what they see as a fitting punishment for Trump.
The fine and a ban would be on top of the punishment Engoron instructed in his September pre-trial ruling, when he ordered the cancellation of Trump’s business licenses. Trump, who has denied any wrongdoing, has appealed that ruling and will undoubtedly appeal a second guilty verdict.
A spokesperson for the New York supreme court said that Engoron is expected to release his ruling on Friday. Engoron had initially said he anticipated ruling by the end of January, but two developments seemed to throw him off schedule.
The first was a letter from a former judge, Barbara Jones, who is currently acting as the court-appointed monitor overseeing the Trump Organization’s financial reporting. In a letter submitted to the court at the end of January, Jones said the Trump Organization submitted financial “disclosures that are either incomplete, present results inconsistently, and/or contain errors”.
Jones specifically pointed to a $48m personal loan Trump received from an entity affiliated with his Chicago building in 2012. Though Trump had reported the loan as a liability on his financial statements for years, Jones could not find any record of it, and the company ultimately determined that “this loan never existed”.
A second development in early February also delayed the ruling. Weisselberg, a longtime Trump executive who served as chief financial officer of the company, was said to be in talks with the Manhattan district attorney’s office for a plea deal over a separate trial. The New York Times reported that Weisselberg was considering a deal to plead guilty in Trump’s fraud trial in order to not be called as a witness in Trump’s separate hush-money trial, which is scheduled to take place on 25 March.
Though Engoron eventually emailed lawyers in the trial to disclose what they knew about the deal, both sides urged Engoron to push forward with his verdict.
In an all-caps post on Truth Social posted on Wednesday, Trump said: “ENGORON WRONGFULLY RULED AGAINST ME BEFORE THE TRIAL EVEN STARTED.
“THIS CROOKED JUDGMENT WILL BE A DARK AND SAD DAY FOR THE JUSTICE SYSTEM IN NEW YORK STATE.”
