New York judge has canceled the Donald Trump Organization’s business certification, after him and his adult sons were found liable for fraud.
Judge Arthur Engoron’s ruling on Monday was a complete rejection of Trump’s arguments that he didn’t inflate the values of his golf courses, hotels, homes at Mar-a-Lago and Seven Springs on financial statements, CNN said.
The ruling came in response to the lawsuit by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is seeking $250 million in damages, a ban on the Trumps from serving as officers of a business in New York and to stop the company from engaging in business transactions for five years.
A trial is expected to begin next week on the amount of damages owed, and the full breadth of Engoron’s ruling – or how it will play out – remains unclear, the inform source said.
The judge canceled the business certifications of the Trump entities that are defendants in the case, including the Trump Organization – a major blow to the business that has been so synonymous with the former president’s personal brand.
There are two New York properties that are part of the lawsuit, the commercial tower at 40 Wall Street and the Trump family compound at Seven Springs. A receiver will be put in place to “manage the dissolution” of the corporate entities.
James, a Democrat, said in a statement Tuesday night. “We look forward to presenting the rest of our case at trial,” “today, a judge ruled in our favor and found that Donald Trump and the Trump Organization engaged in years of financial fraud.”
Trump condemned the ruling in a statement, accusing Engoron of “doing the bidding” of James.“It is a great company that has been slandered and maligned by this politically motivated Witch Hunt.”
Trump said, “It is very unfair, and I call for help from the highest Courts in New York State, or the Federal System, to intercede. THIS IS NOT AMERICA!”
Trump’s attorney Christopher Kise called the ruling “completely disconnected from the facts and governing law.”
“While the full impact of the decision remains unclear, what is clear is that President Trump and his family will seek all available appellate remedies to rectify this miscarriage of justice,” he added.
The judge was unsparing in his decision, criticizing the Trumps’ defense arguments and calls defendants’ arguments bogus.
Among other things, Engoron said that Trump is accused of inflating the value of his triplex apartment at Trump Tower by three times its size, resulting in an overvaluation of between $114 million to $207 million.
“A discrepancy of this order of magnitude, by a real estate developer sizing up his own living space of decades, can only be considered fraud,” Engoron wrote.
“Exacerbating defendants’ obstreperous conduct is their continued reliance on bogus arguments, in papers and oral argument,” he said.
The state supreme court judge likened the Trumps’ legal defense of his fraudulent financial statements to a Chico Marx line in the comedy “Duck Soup”: “Well, who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”
James has alleged that Trump, three of his children, his companies and his business executives defrauded lenders, insurers and other entities. (An appeals court dismissed Trump’s eldest daughter, Ivanka, as a co-defendant from the case in June.)
In the lawsuit, James claims that Trump reaped a “substantial” financial benefit by putting forward faulty information in his financial statements, including $150 million in the form of favorable interest rates he obtained from the banks that the attorney general said his team misled.
In the order, the judge rejected Trump’s deposition testimony in which the former president said that the financial statements were not fraudulent because they contained disclaimers. Trump said the statements contained a “worthless clause” in them warning lenders and others that they shouldn’t be relied on.
Tuesday, the judge said that “the defendants’ reliance on these ‘worthless’ disclaimers is worthless.”
In a statement on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, Eric Trump was reported as saying: “Today, I lost all faith in the New York legal system. Never before have I seen such hatred toward one person by a judge – a coordinated effort with the Attorney General to destroy a man’s life, company and accomplishments.”
“We have run an exceptional company – never missing a loan payment, making banks hundreds of millions of dollars, developing some of the most iconic assets in the world. Yet today, the persecution of our family continues.. “
