A New York judge fined Donald Trump more than $350 million in the civil business fraud trial and barred the former president from serving as an officer on any New York corporation or applying for a loan within New York for three years.
Judge Arthur Engoron made his decision Friday after a trial that began Oct. 2 and ended Dec. 13. More than 40 witnesses testified at trial.
The ruling also stipulates that the former president’s sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., can’t serve as an officer or director of any New York corporation for two years. The judge also fined each of Trump’s sons $4 million.
The New York Attorney General’s office claimed that Trump and his top managers fraudulently misrepresented the financial condition of some of his companies from 2011 through 2021.
Trump inflated his personal net worth by billions of dollars and Trump and his companies used the inflated net worth to get banks to lend him money on better terms than he should have been given, the AG claimed.
In one instance, the AG claimed a bank appraised a Trump property at 40 Wall Street at $220 million in 2012 but Trump’s team listed that property’s worth at $527 million.
In September, Judge Engoron found the Trump and his companies had engaged in years of financial fraud.
“Even in the world of high finance, this Court cannot endorse a proposition that finds a misstatement of at least $812 million dollars to be ‘immaterial,” the judge wrote in September. “Defendants have failed to identify any authority for the notion that discrepancies of the magnitude demonstrated here could be considered immaterial.”
The New York Times reported that Trump will appeal the financial penalty.
