Trump expected to make final push in NY court today as $370M fraud case wraps up
Donald Trump is expected to return to his civil fraud trial in New York Thursday for closing statements in the case that could cost him some $370 million and bar him from doing business in the Empire State.
The New York Attorney General’s Office and Trump’s legal team will each get to make their final pitch to Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron beginning at 10 a.m.
State lawyers earlier this month urged the court to fine Trump $370 million plus interest — up from the $250 million that the AG had proposed he pay before the trial started in October.
Attorney General Letitia James also sought to permanently bar Trump and his company from operating in New York for a decade of allegedly pumping the value of his assets on annual “statements of financial condition” turned over to lenders and insurers.
The ex-president’s lawyers are likely to argue that no penalty should be imposed for what their hired witness called “inevitable” accounting mistakes — including tripling the size of the Trump Tower penthouse on documents provided to lenders.
Trump had requested to issue part of his team’s closing statement himself.
But Engoron — who is deciding the non-jury case — denied the unusual request Wednesday after the GOP frontrunner for the 2024 presidential election refused to commit to focusing his statement only on “relevant, material facts” related to trial evidence, which is what’s typically allowed in a lawyer’s closing argument.
Engoron has said he hopes to deliver a verdict by the end of the month, bringing to a close a trial that saw Trump deliver theatric testimony, with his sons Eric and Don Jr. and daughter Ivanka also taking the stand.
Here’s how Donald Trump’s NY fraud ruling impacts his businesses
The bombshell court ruling finding Donald Trump liable for fraud left even his own lawyers scratching their heads — asking the judge on Wednesday to clarify his decision canceling the former president’s New York business licenses.
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron’s 34-page ruling from Tuesday would force Trump, 77, to hand over control of his Empire State properties — including Trump Tower in Midtown — to an independent third party, otherwise known as a receiver.
In his ruling, the judge wrote the receiver must be appointed “to manage the dissolution of the cancelled” business certificates for limited liability corporations, or LLCs, under the Trump Organization umbrella.
Here’s how the ruling impacts Trump’s businesses, according to legal experts:
What are business certificates and what does it mean to have them revoked?
Business certificates are issued by the state to prove a company’s validity and are used for business transactions.
They can be thought of like a birth certificate for a person, former financial-crimes prosecutor Diana Florence told The Post.
When the judge canceled them, it was like being given “death certificates” — with the ruling amounting to a “corporate death penalty,” Florence said.
Judge revokes Trump’s NY business licenses, finds he committed fraud by inflating wealth
These certificates are required for entities like LLCs and come with privileges such as protecting personal assets if the company goes under, Cornell Law professor Robert Hockett said.
Hockett said a common but “unsavory business practice” is for a company to pretend it has more money than it really does in order to help it get an LLC certificate.
In this case, an LLC functions like a “shell” meant to “evade accountability.”
“What the judge found yesterday is that Trump is effectively doing this,” Hockett told The Post. “He’s been pretending many of these businesses of his are well capitalized and capable of paying their creditors — in effect doing good work that benefits the public and warrants the certifications of limited liability.”
READ MORE
Trump, who was not required to attend the trial because it’s civil rather than criminal, nonetheless watched the proceedings on multiple occasions even when he was not testifying.
State lawyers said the new proposed fine reflects more than $168 million worth of Trump’s allegedly ill-gotten interest rate perks, $199 million in profit from property sales and $2.5 million to employees for participating in the “fraudulent” schemes.
“The conclusion that defendants intended to defraud when preparing and certifying Trump’s [statements] is inescapable,” AG lawyer Kevin Wallace wrote in a court filing earlier this month.
As the trial played out, Trump was found to have twice violated a gag order barring him from publicly disparaging Engoron’s court staff, and was ordered to pay fines totaling $15,000.
Trump’s attorneys are slated to speak for around two-and-a-half hours Thursday morning, with the AG’s side to follow with a two-and-a-half-hour statement in the afternoon.
