Before Judge Arthur Engoron issued his ruling in Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial, the question wasn’t whether the former president would be penalized; it was how much he’d be penalized.
The answer has come into focus, and it’s a safe bet the Republican will not be pleased with the outcome. NBC News reported:
The judge who presided over a civil business fraud trial against Donald Trump on Friday ordered the former president, his sons, business associates and company to pay over $350 million in damages and temporarily limited their ability to do business in New York. Judge Arthur Engoron ordered the former president and the Trump Organization to pay over $354 million in damages, and bars Trump “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.”
The full, 92-page ruling is here.
In case anyone needs a refresher, it was in September 2022 when New York Attorney General Letitia James announced a sweeping lawsuit against the former president and the Trump Organization. The civil case was rather devastating: The state attorney general’s office, pointing to more than 200 instances of fraud over 10 years, announced that it was seeking $370 million in civil penalties.
The state investigation, oddly enough, was launched after Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer, testified to Congress under oath that his former boss and his associates routinely engaged in financial wrongdoing.
Cohen’s testimony was a political bombshell, but what the public didn’t necessarily know at the time was that it was watched with great interest by officials in the New York attorney general’s office.
Five years to the month later, the former president and his Trump Organization were held accountable for its financial misdeeds.
The ruling also completes a fraud trifecta of sorts. As regular readers know, Trump’s “university” proved to be a fraudulent operation, and during his White House tenure, the Republican was required to pay $25 million to his former “students” — a first-of-its-kind payment for a sitting American president.
Also while in office, Trump’s charitable foundation proved to be a fraudulent operation, which was forced to close its doors, and which led to a $2 million judgment after the evidence showed he repeatedly misused the ostensible charity for his own interests. And now the former president’s has been found to have committed repeated acts of fraud, too. As my MSNBC colleague Jordan Rubin explained, this new ruling “will likely be appealed, so it won’t necessarily be the final word on the fate of the Trump empire.” But in the meantime, it’s worth appreciating the fact that it takes a special kind of person to get caught overseeing a fraudulent charity, a fraudulent “university,” and a business that repeatedly committed fraud. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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