- The former president has now been hit with a stunning total of $536.8 million in court damages in the last three weeks after an $83.3 million judgment in a civil defamation case.
- “This verdict is a manifest injustice – plain and simple,” Trump attorney Alina Habba said.
A New York judge ordered Donald Trump and his namesake company to pay $453.5 million in damages and interest, with additional penalties against two of his sons, and barred them from conducting business in the state after committing rampant fraud by over-valuing his real estate empire.
“The frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience,” Justice Arthur Engoron wrote in a decision released Friday.
“In order to borrow more and at lower rates, defendants submitted blatantly false financial data to the accountants, resulting in fraudulent financial statements,” Engoron said in a 92-page ruling.
The judge called the refusal of Trump and the others to admit errors in the financial statements “pathological.” Engoron cited the tripling of the size of Trump’s penthouse at Trump Tower as one example.
“Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological,” Engoron wrote. “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.”
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