NEW YORK (NEWSnet/AP) — Former President Donald Trump and his companies have been ordered to pay $355 million in a New York civil fraud trial.
The ruling also bars Trump from holding executive office at a New York company and getting loans from New York banks for three years.
Trump won’t have to pay out the money immediately as an appeals process plays out.
His eldest sons, Trump Organization Executive Vice Presidents Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, each were ordered to pay $4 million and barred from being officers of New York companies for two years. Former chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg was ordered to pay $1 million.
However, Judge Arthur Engoron backed away from an earlier ruling that would have dissolved the former president’s companies. But if upheld, the verdict will force a shakeup at the top of the company.
Trump’s lawyers had said even before the verdict that they would appeal.
Engoron issued his decision after ruling a years long scheme duped banks and others with financial statements that inflated the former president’s wealth.
He concluded that Trump and his co-defendants “failed to accept responsibility” for their actions and that expert witnesses who testified for the defense “simply denied reality.”
Because it was civil, not criminal in nature, the case did not carry the potential of prison time.
The stiff penalty was a victory for New York Attorney General Letitia James, who sued Trump in 2022 over what she said was not just harmless bragging but years of deceptive practices as he built the multinational collection of skyscrapers, golf courses and other properties that catapulted him to wealth, fame and the White House.
The suit is one of many legal headaches for Trump as he campaigns for a return to the White House. He has been indicted four times in the last year — accused in Georgia and Washington, D.C., of plotting to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, in Florida of hoarding classified documents, and in Manhattan of falsifying business records related to hush money paid to porn actor Stormy Daniels on his behalf.
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