NEW YORK — Donald Trump has appealed a $450 million verdict against him in the New York attorney general’s civil business fraud case in which a judge found that the GOP presidential nominee was responsible for a decade’s worth of cheating business partners.
Lawyers for Trump, his company and for two of Trump’s sons filed a brief in state appeals court Monday, arguing that severe errors were committed by Arthur Engoron, the judge who decided Trump’s fate after a two-month bench trial in New York Supreme Court.
On Feb. 16, Engoron found that illegal acts were committed when the defendants deceived lenders and insurance companies by inflating the value of Trump’s properties and other assets in annual financial statements between 2011 and 2021 to get better interest rates and lower insurance costs. Trump and his lawyers have always said that none of the parties they made deals with were cheated.
“Appellants’ business partners made over one hundred million dollars in profits and reaped extensive benefits from their relationship with [Trump],” lawyers for the former president wrote. “They raved internally about their business with him and were eager for more.”
An appellate court panel could reduce the fine that Trump owes, which represents his ill-gotten gains plus another $100 million in interest that is continuing to accrue. His lawyers are asking for the fine to be significantly reduced or dismissed.
Trump’s side argued that Engoron ignored a pretrial ruling by the appeals court that would have eliminated significant parts of New York Attorney General Letitia James’s case on statute of limitations grounds. That same decision outright dismissed Ivanka Trump from the matter, leaving her brothers Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump to face trial with their father.
Trump’s sons were brought into the matter as defendants “despite their lack of any direct role in preparing the challenged (financial) statements,” Trump lawyers’ brief reads.
Trump’s side argues that Engoron used faulty legal reasoning to keep the case intact by saying that since aspects of the fraud continued past statute of limitations windows, civil allegations that were unrelated to Ivanka Trump’s alleged involvement were not to be dismissed. Trump argued that rationale was in clear violation of the appellate court’s orders.
On Feb. 16, Engoron found that illegal acts were committed when the defendants deceived lenders and insurance companies by inflating the value of Trump’s properties and other assets to get better interest rates and lower insurance costs. Since the case was civil, no one involved faced the prospect of jail or prison time.
Separately, Trump was convicted by a jury in New York criminal court in May on 34 counts of falsifying business records for scheming to hide a hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, issued weeks before the 2016 election as the Trump campaign swatted away a series of damaging stories about him.
Trump is slated to be sentenced in that case in September and could face incarceration.
Trump attorney Christopher Kise said in a statement Monday that the case by James and her office amounted to an abuse of authority. Trump, his advocates and his supporters have long accused James, a Democrat, of being motivated by politics by pursuing Trump.
“This appeal seeks reversal of the trial court’s legally bereft decisions which ignored the undisputed facts, refused to follow the binding mandate of the Appellate Division, imposed draconian, unlawful, and unconstitutional penalties, and willingly allowed a reckless, politically motivated Attorney General to meddle in lawful, private, and mutually profitable transactions,” Kise said.
James has repeatedly denied any claim of unfairness and has said that investigators from her office found clear proof of wrongdoing and a culture of deceit at the Trump Organization, which is a real estate, golf resort and hospitality company that is solely owned by Trump.
The company is under the watch of a monitor appointed by Engoron, who ruled in February that the monitoring would continue for at least three years.
Engoron’s decision had other non-monetary punishments that had the capacity to impact day-to-day operations at the Trump company, which is headquartered at Trump Tower in New York, such as the determination that Trump could not serve as an officer or director of a company in the state for three years. His sons were barred from doing so for two years.
Trump was also barred from applying for new loans from financial institutions chartered or registered in New York.
Source link : https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/07/22/trump-appeals-450-million-ny-fraud-finding-decade-misconduct/
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Publish date : 2024-07-23 01:58:00
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