Donald J. Trump can lose all of his money depending on the outcome of his civil fraud lawsuit. The judge described the former president’s “complete lack of contrition” as almost pathological.

The former President was found guilty of plotting to manipulate his net worth and was ordered to pay a penalty of about $355 million plus interest, which could deplete his entire cash reserve, by a New York judge on Friday, 16 February 2024. This decision dealt Donald J. Trump a crushing setback in his civil fraud lawsuit.

The tumultuous, multi-year legal proceeding that saw New York’s Attorney General put Mr. Trump’s extravagant claims to a fortune on trial came to an end with Justice Arthur F. Engoron’s ruling. 

Judge Engoron had complete control over the case because there was no jury, and he used it to his advantage by handily imposing a wide range of penalties that posed a threat to the former president’s economic empire and his ability to contest four criminal cases while running for President again.

Judge Engoron prohibited Mr. Trump from holding senior positions at any New York-based business, including parts of his own Trump Organization, for three years. The former President’s older sons were also given a two-year suspension and required to pay over $4 million apiece. Since the decision casts a question on whether any of the family members can manage the corporation from now on, Eric Trump is the de facto Chief Executive of the company.

According to the Attorney General, Letitia James, the judge also mandated that they pay significant interest, increasing the former president’s punishment to $450 million.

Judge Engoron, in a departure from his usual manner, chastised Mr. Trump, and the other accused for their years-long refusal to acknowledge any misconduct. He claimed that “their total lack of regret and sorrow verges on pathology.”

While pointing out that Mr. Trump had not engaged in violent criminal activity, he nevertheless acknowledged that “Donald Trump is not Bernard Madoff.” Nonetheless, the accused are unable to acknowledge their mistakes, the author added.

Although Mr. Trump plans to appeal the financial penalty, he will need to provide the required funds or get a bond within 30 days. Since the majority of his fortune is in real estate, which is worth significantly more overall than the fine, the verdict won’t make him bankrupt.

In addition, Mr. Trump plans to request that an appeals court suspend the limitations preventing him and his sons from leading the business while it reviews the matter. During a press conference on Friday night from Mar-a-Lago, his residence in Palm Beach, Florida, he criticized Ms. James and Justice Engoron, labeling them both as “corrupt.”

One of Mr. Trump’s solicitors, Alina Habba, called the decision “a manifest injustice plain and simple” in her statement. “We trust that the Appellate Division will overturn this egregious verdict given the grave stakes,” the speaker continued.

However, it’s unlikely that Mr. Trump will be able to stop one of the judge’s most severe penalties, which is the appointment of an impartial monitor who will serve as the court’s eyes and ears at the Trump Organization for an additional three years. Additionally, Justice Engoron reinforced the monitor’s powers to keep an eye out for fraud and question transactions that seem dubious.

Trump Attorneys have attacked Barbara Jones, the monitor, claiming that her job has already cost the firm more than $2.5 million. They also claim that the Trumps may become enraged if Jones is allowed to continue overseeing the privately owned company because they view her as an annoyance and an insult.

Ms. James had demanded an even more severe punishment, requesting that Mr. Trump be permanently excluded from the New York business community. She attacked the basis of Mr. Trump’s public image as a rich businessman by accusing him of exaggerating his net worth to get preferential treatment from banks and other lenders in the 2022 lawsuit that set up the trial.

Although the lenders profited from Mr. Trump, Ms. James contends that they were the true victims of the case and that they would have profited much more had it not been for his deception.

With nearly half of the $355 million representing the interest that Mr. Trump saved and the remaining amount representing his profit from the recent sale of two properties money that the judge has now reclaimed from Mr. Trump and corporate entities he owns the financial penalty reflects those lost profits.

Judge Engoron sided with the Attorney General on the main contention of her case, ruling before the trial that the former President had deceived the lenders using his yearly financial statements. 

The judge’s decision on Friday, 16 February 2024, upheld nearly every other charge made by Ms. James against Mr. Trump, concluding that the former President had colluded with his senior aides to break multiple state laws.

For the time being, the judge’s ruling gives Democrat Ms. James a triumph that will define her career. She ran on a platform of prosecuting Mr. Trump, and although the former President blasted her and called her a self-serving politician, she remained composed in the courtroom.

At a press conference on Friday night, Ms. James declared, “This long-running fraud was intentional, egregious, and illegal.” She also stated, “There cannot be different rules for different people in this country, and former presidents are no exception.”

After a jury convicted Mr. Trump guilty of sexual abuse of a writer named E. Jean Carroll in a defamation lawsuit in January, her victory marks the businessman’s second significant legal setback in as many months. $83.3 million was the jury’s punishment for him.

The verdict on Friday comes just before Mr. Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan is scheduled for late January. Along with these three other criminal charges, he is facing 57 more felony counts.

To be sure, Mr. Trump has suffered more from his legal issues than from the fraud prosecution. “This has been a persecution of somebody that’s done a good job in New York,” he said throughout the trial, challenging the trial’s premise.

In their argument, Mr. Trump’s attorneys challenged the Attorney General to identify a victim of the fraud who was not a victim in the conventional sense. The Trump Organization has “never missed any loan payment or been in default on any loan,” according to a statement sent by the organization on Friday, 16 February 2024. 

Additionally, the lenders “performed extensive due diligence before entering into these transactions,” the spokesperson said.

During the trial, the former bankers of the President were brought as evidence by Mr. Trump’s attorneys, and they stated that they had been happy to hire him.

The judge rejected the attempts of Eric Trump and his brother Donald Trump Jr. to disassociate themselves from their father’s financial declarations, despite their testimony as well. They will probably take offense at Justice Engoron’s decision to prohibit them from managing any New York businesses for two years, and Mr. Trump for three.

The case’s consequences appeared to jeopardize the Trump Organization’s existence before the trial. Much of the former President’s New York enterprise was dissolved by Judge Engoron upon his initial determination that Mr. Trump had committed fraud.

Judge Engoron retracted his decision on Friday 16 February 2024, when legal experts questioned the judge’s authority to make such a decision. Any “restructuring and potential dissolution,” the judge declared, would instead be left to Ms. Jones, the impartial monitor.

The Court also requested Ms. Jones to appoint an Independent Compliance Director to supervise the company’s financial reporting from inside its ranks and gave her additional authority as part of an “enhanced monitorship.”

It may be difficult for the business to compete in the competitive New York Real Estate market because of the monitorship and other sanctions, which include a three-year prohibition on Mr. Trump and his business obtaining loans from banks registered in the state.

However, the financial penalty will sting far more than anything else. If the decision is affirmed on appeal, Mr. Trump’s post-presidential cushion of liquidity cash, equities, and bonds may be destroyed.

Last year, Mr. Trump stated under oath that he had more than $400 million in cash on hand. However, with Justice Engoron’s $355 million sentence, the interest he owes, and the $83.3 million payment to Ms. Carroll, that money may already be gone. If that’s the case, Mr. Trump may need to liquidate a property or another asset to pay the settlements.

It’s also impossible to ignore the penalties’ symbolic meaning. As the former president’s career as a New York tycoon comes to an end with the judge’s decision to remove him from its operations, Mr. Trump’s name is associated with the firm he controlled for decades.

For the time being, Mr. Trump has turned his legal troubles into political capital. He has inaccurately presented the instances.

Even when he was not in the spotlight, he created drama by grumbling to his attorneys and rolling his eyes at the defense table. The testimony of his longtime fixer, Michael D, who connected Mr. Trump to the fraud plot, particularly infuriated him.

After successfully scolding Mr. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s attorneys requested that Justice Engoron dismiss the case due to apparent inconsistencies in Mr. Cohen’s evidence. Mr. Trump got up and bounded out of the courtroom when the judge declined.

The court mostly accepted Mr. Trump’s actions, but he forbade the former president from criticizing any of his employees at the beginning of the trial chiefly, his legal clerk, who sat close to the judge so they could communicate. The judge fined Mr. Trump $15,000 for breaking the injunction twice.

Despite the theatricality of the courtroom, the evidence which mostly consisted of old spreadsheets and emails was frequently boring. The attorneys for Ms. James used that documentation evidence to demonstrate how Mr. Trump’s business had inflated the value of properties like office buildings and golf courses, sometimes to ridiculous heights, by manipulating figures and ignoring evaluations.

The advertised size of Mr. Trump’s Fifth Avenue triplex apartment in Trump Tower was the most flagrant misrepresentation. It was 10,996 square feet, but the old president had valued it at 30,000 for years.

Justice Engoron chastised Mr. Trump and the other defendants in his judgment, claiming that the only mistake they would acknowledge was lying about the size of the flat.

Justice Engoron stated that his goal was to gather information and implement the law, not to “judge morality.”

He wrote, “The court aims to protect the integrity of the financial marketplace and, consequently, the public as a whole.”

Judge Engoron continued, saying that because Mr. Trump did not acknowledge his mistakes, he was forced to conclude that, in absent intervention, the former President would carry out his fraud.

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