New York Attorney General Letitia James said she would go to court and ask a judge to seize former President Donald Trump‘s assets if he is unable to pay his $354 million fine.
James said that she would even go after Trump’s crown jewel if he fails to pay the required fine from his civil fraud case. Trump’s most notable skyscraper is his 40 Wall Street building.
“If he does not have funds to pay off the judgment, then we will seek judgment enforcement mechanisms in court, and we will ask the judge to seize his assets,” James told ABC News on Tuesday. “We are prepared to make sure that the judgment is paid to New Yorkers, and yes, I look at 40 Wall Street each and every day.”
Trump was fined $354.8 million last Friday after Judge Arthur Engoron ruled that he inflated his net worth and the net worth of his company in order to get more favorable loan agreements.
Trump has denied all wrongdoing and said he will appeal the ruling. James said she is “confident” she will win the appeal.
She also rebutted Trump’s claims that the case lacked any victims, claiming financial fraud is not a “victimless crime,” and that the case helped make sure New Yorkers are treated fairly by the financial market. James also described the amount of fraud committed by Trump as “staggering.”
“[Trump] engaged in this massive amount of fraud. It wasn’t just a simple mistake, a slight oversight; the variations are wildly exaggerated, and the extent of the fraud was staggering,” James said. “If average New Yorkers went into a bank and submitted false documents, the government would throw the book at them, and the same should be true for former presidents.”
Engoron’s ruling also bans Trump from “serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation or other legal entity in New York” for three years, and his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump are also banned from doing business in New York for two years.
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The judge’s decision comes just weeks after Trump was ordered by a federal court jury in Manhattan to pay $83.3 million in damages to Elle columnist E. Jean Carroll in a second civil defamation trial related to his denial of her sexual assault claim that dated back to the mid-1990s. In an earlier trial, a judge ordered him to pay Carroll another $5.5 million.
Trump stands to lose up to $450 million in total from all three cases if both defamation verdicts and Engoron’s order are upheld after the expected appeals process.