Trump makes case to avoid $370 million in fines as civil fraud trial comes to a close
Kaelan Deese
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New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) on Friday said former President Donald Trump should be forced to pay $370 million in penalties for misrepresenting his net worth on official business statements, jumping from the $250 million amount proposed when the civil lawsuit was first filed.
The new sum sought by James comes as the monthslong civil lawsuit against the Trump Organization is coming to a close. James is asking for more because of additional evidence of “ill-gotten gains” Trump and his family earned by submitting fraudulent statements to banks and insurers, the attorney general argued in court filings.
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Before the trial began, Judge Arthur Engoron in September ordered the dissolution of Trump’s New York business empire, which would essentially bar him from ever doing business in the state again.
James is seeking several additional penalties to lay on top of Engoron’s pretrial ruling, and the new brief marks the first time she has listed all of her requested penalties.
The state attorney general seeks a lifetime ban on Trump and ex-business associates Allen Weisselberg and Jeffrey McConney ever serving as an officer or director of a New York corporation, according to a filing by James’s assistant Kevin Wallace.
“Trump, Weisselberg and McConney worked together for years to inflate Trump’s net worth while concealing the fraud from counterparties,” Wallace added.
In filings by Trump’s lawyers submitted just before James’s request, the former president’s team argued that state law does not allow its attorney general to seek such financial penalties, presenting an argument that has previously not worked in their favor.
“This is an unprecedented extension of §63(12) into a sophisticated commercial context. Seeking to penalize profitable commercial transactions without evidentiary support and impose sweeping and punitive relief without providing Defendants access to a jury constitutes an expansion of the law and creates constitutional concerns,” defense attorneys Michael Madaio and Chris Kise wrote in a brief filed Friday.
Closing arguments in the four-month trial are slated for Jan. 11. Engoron said he will decide on penalties by the end of the month.
Friday’s closing briefs and the closing arguments slated for next week address the remaining issues that have been on trial since October. Specifically, the trial focused on whether Trump and the defendants violated six state fraud statutes, what amount Trump would be forced to pay in penalties, and whether disgorgement, the amount Trump would be forced to pay, would be ordered.
Trump has sought for months to prove that Engoron has ruled in a partisan fashion in an effort to request a mistrial, alleging that his clerk sitting next to him — Engoron’s clerk has made hundreds of dollars of donations to Democratic causes — could set the stage for an unfair verdict. Engoron denied the request for the mistrial in mid-November.
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“This judge is a very partisan judge with a person who is very partisan sitting alongside him — perhaps even much more partisan than he is,” Trump said in late October.
Trump has been put under a gag order preventing him from commenting on courtroom staff and has been fined a total of $15,000 for twice violating the order.