Former President Donald Trump, his adult sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and a couple of former Trump Organization officials recently appealed nearly half a billion-dollar fraud verdict entered against them in a New York court earlier this month — meaning he’ll have to put up a massive pile of money to secure that appeal via Mediaite.
It has been noted that the case started with a civil lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), who sought to force the Trump Org to disgorge $370 million in profits for falsifying the values of their assets, bar Trump and his adult sons from doing business in New York, and revoke the company’s certificate to do business in the state.
Trump had already suffered a severe blow when Engoron granted James’ motion for summary judgment in September of last year. This decision found the former president accountable for the main allegation in the lawsuit, which was that Trump had committed fraud by knowingly inflating the value of his assets by billions of dollars and inflating his net worth in order to close deals and obtain financing. An impartial monitor was also appointed by that order to keep an eye on the business’s assets.
In the Judge Arthur Engoron verdict, Trump was forced to pay approximately $355 million, Donald Jr. and Eric had to pay $4 million apiece, and Allen Weisselberg, the former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, had to pay $1 million.
The order also barred Trump from serving as a corporate officer or a director of a company in New York for three years, and barred his sons for two years. The Trumps did avoid the so-called “corporate death penalty;” Engoron declined to revoke the Trump Org’s certificate to do business in New York.
The monetary verdicts also incur pre- and post-judgment interest under New York law, bringing the total amount owed by the Trumps to over $464 million, a growing figure that James has been updating daily with posts on The Platform Formerly Known as Twitter.
The appeal was not a surprise — CNN Newsroom anchor Jim Acosta described it as “breaking but not shocking news” Monday morning — and Trump will have to put up the cash or post bond to sustain the appeal, as chief legal affairs correspondent Paula Reid noted.
Trump’s ability to scrape together nearly half a billion dollars is complicated by a civil defamation verdict in January awarding writer E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million, in addition to a prior $5 million verdict she previously won against the ex-president in a related case.
+$114,553.04 = $464,805,336.70 https://t.co/gugrACDTpC
— NY AG James (@NewYorkStateAG) February 25, 2024
