By Jeremy Herb, Lauren del Valle and Kara Scannell | CNN
Judge Arthur Engoron hit Donald Trump with his biggest punishment to date on Friday, in a ruling that fined the former president $355 million for fraudulently inflating the values of his properties.
Combined with the $83 million judgment issued against Trump for defaming E. Jean Carroll, that means Trump has been fined roughly $438 million over the past four weeks.
Friday’s ruling underscored how the civil cases against Trump are still significantly damaging to the former president, endangering his business empire even as he faces four criminal trials, the first of which is set to begin next month.
Engoron found Trump liable for fraud, conspiracy and issuing false financial statements and false business records, and he barred him from serving as director of a company in New York for three years. But while he stopped short of dissolving the Trump Organization altogether, Engoron issued a blistering 93-page opinion that painted the former president as unremorseful and highly likely to commit fraud again.
“Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological,” Engoron wrote of Trump and his co-defendants.
Here’s what to know from the decision:
Engoron’s fines are the biggest yet against Trump
The fines Engoron levied in his ruling against Trump – known as “disgorgement,” or the return of ill-gotten gains – are higher in terms of magnitude than any previous fine levied against the former president and his company.
New York Attorney General Letitia James had asked Engoron to fine Trump and other defendants $370 million, accusing them of engaging in a long-running fraud scheme of inflating Trump’s assets on his financial statements.
It came pretty close. Engoron found that the defendants’ fraud saved them about $168 million in interest, fining Trump and his companies that amount.
Engoron ruled that Trump and his companies were liable for $126 million in ill-gotten profits from the sale of the Old Post Office in Washington, DC, a contract the judge says “was obtained through the use of false SFC (statements of financial condition).”
And the judge ruled that Trump and his companies were liable for $60 million in profits from the sale of Ferry Point in the Bronx.
Engoron also wrote that Trump would be required for interest on those payments, which could potentially add as much as $100 million to the total he’s ultimately required to pay.
In addition, Trump was barred from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation or other legal entity in New York for a period of three years.
Engoron gets the last word, and then some
Trump repeatedly attacked Engoron and the case throughout the 11-week trial on social media, outside the courtroom – and even to the judge’s face while he testified.
On Friday, Engoron got the last word, painting Trump as a “pathological” fraudster who would not stop unless forced.
“Defendants’ refusal to admit error – indeed, to continue it, according to the Independent Monitor – constrains this Court to conclude that they will engage in it going forward unless judicially restrained,” Engoron wrote.
Engoron acknowledged that the sins Trump committed – which his lawyers frequently argued had no victim because banks were repaid and often eager to do business with Trump’s company – were not as serious as some crimes. But he faulted Trump and his co-defendants for a complete lack of contrition.
“This is a venial sin, not a mortal sin. Defendants did not commit murder or arson. They did not rob a bank at gunpoint. Donald Trump is not Bernard Madoff. Yet, defendants are incapable of admitting the error of their ways. Instead, they adopt a ‘See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’ posture that the evidence belies,” the judge wrote.
Engoron even turned to poetry to make his point: “The English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744) first declared, ‘To err is human, to forgive is divine.’ Defendants apparently are of a different mind.”
Engoron was critical of Trump’s testimony on the stand, when the former president mostly ignored questions and took the opportunity instead to give political speeches attacking the case, the attorney general and the judge. At first, Engoron tried to rein Trump in – even threatening to remove him as a witness at one point – but he eventually gave up and let Trump rant in response to the questions from the attorney general’s lawyer.
“Overall, Donald Trump rarely responded to the questions asked, and he frequently interjected long, irrelevant speeches on issues far beyond the scope of the trial,” Engoron wrote. “His refusal to answer the questions directly, or in some cases, at all, severely compromised his credibility.”
No corporate death penalty as judge backs off dissolving Trump Org.
Believe it or not, it could have been worse for Trump.
The judge banned him from serving as an officer or director of a New York corporation for three years, but did not issue the so-called corporate death penalty.
In September, Engoron issued a summary judgment dissolving Trump’s business certificates in finding that Trump and his co-defendants were liable for persistent and repeated fraud.
But he pulled back from that decision – which had been put on hold pending appeal – on Friday, writing that he no longer felt it was necessary because he was putting in place two different independent monitors to oversee the company going forward.
The independent monitor installed last fall will stay in place for at least three years, Engoron ruled. In addition, he ordered an independent director of compliance should be installed at the Trump Org. at the company’s expense.
“As going forward there will be two-tiered oversight, an Independent Monitor and an Independent Director of Compliance, of the major activities that could lead to fraud, cancellation of the business licenses is no longer necessary,” Engoron wrote.
Trump’s former lawyer and fixer ‘told the truth’
Engoron recapped Michael Cohen’s theatrical trial testimony, acknowledging the credibility issues with Trump’s former lawyer and fixer.
But ultimately, Engoron said, he believed Cohen.
“Although the animosity between the witness and the defendant is palpable, providing Cohen with an incentive to lie, the Court found his testimony credible, based on the relaxed manner in which he testified, the general plausibility of his statements, and, most importantly, the way his testimony was corroborated by other trial evidence,” Engoron wrote.
Engoron pushed back on Trump’s narrative that Cohen was a star witness for the attorney general on whose credibility the case could teeter.
“Michael Cohen was an important witness on behalf of the plaintiff, although hardly the linchpin that defendants have attempted to portray him to be,” Engoron said.
While the testimony from Trump’s former fixer was compromised by his previous perjury plea in another case and some “seeming contradictions” in what he said at this trial, the judge said he believed Cohen when he testified that “Trump did not expressly direct him to reverse engineer financial statements, he ordered him to do so indirectly, in his ‘mob voice.’”
“A less-forgiving factfinder might have concluded differently, might not have believed a single word of a convicted perjurer,” Engoron also wrote. “This factfinder does not believe that pleading guilty to perjury means that you can never tell the truth. Michael Cohen told the truth.”
This story is breaking and will be updated.
