Will Donald Trump be able to pay $370 million fine in New York fraud trial?

Former President Donald Trump prepares to testify during his trial in New York State Supreme Court in New York City on Nov. 6, 2023. (David Dee Delgado/Getty Images)

By Catherine Yang

1/5/2024

Updated:

1/5/2024

0:00

5:26

The New York Attorney General’s office and attorneys for former President Donald Trump and Trump Organization filed proposed conclusions featuring clashing narratives, previewing their closing arguments for the civil fraud case on Jan. 11.

State attorneys are now requesting $370 million in damages, up from the originally proposed $250 million.

“The conclusion that defendants intended to defraud when preparing and certifying Trump’s SFCs [statements of financial condition] is inescapable; the myriad deceptive schemes they employed to inflate asset values and conceal facts were so outrageous that they belie innocent explanation,” state attorneys wrote.

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“Record evidence ... supports disgorgement of $370 million, plus pre-judgment interest,” the filing reads.

They argue the number is based on the difference in interest earned based on the SFCs versus what the Trump Organization should have been charged, plus profit gained on two deals, and bonuses employees earned on allegedly fraudulent schemes.

The trial began on Oct. 2, 2023, and lasted 44 days.

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The state attorneys argue that after all testimony and evidence, it was clear that President Trump and other Trump Organization executives committed fraud with intent, earned hundreds of millions in “ill-gotten gains” and that they continue to do so “without meaningful corporate oversight to prevent further fraud on the marketplace.”

In addition to President Trump, the lawsuit names Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., both executive vice presidents of Trump Organization, and former Trump Organization CFO Allan Weisselberg and former Trump Organization Comptroller Jeff McConney.

State attorneys allege that they were allowed to remain on the payroll and “rewarded” with lucrative severance packages that “restricted their ability to cooperate with law enforcement investigations,” amounting to acts of “corporate malfeasance.”

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They request that an independent monitor oversee the Trump Organization for the next five years, that President Trump, Mr. Weisselberg, and Mr. McConney be banned from doing business in New York permanently, and that Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. be barred from doing business in New York for five years.

Meanwhile, defense attorneys argue that the attorney general failed to show any material misstatements, fraud or intention to defraud and that the evidence shows no entitlement to disgorgement, or the repayment of profits made from wrongful conduct.

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“There is no evidence in the record that the terms or pricing of any of the subject loans would have been different based on the purported misstatements alleged by Plaintiff. Not a single witness from any bank (or anywhere else) testified to this at trial,” reads the defense’s proposed conclusion.

The actual interest rate Trump Organization paid on one of three loans in question ranged between 1.83 percent and 4.16 percent, another ranged between 2.08 percent and 4.41 percent, according to the brief, and the bank would have kept these rates even if President Trump’s net worth was only $100 million.

Financial Statements

The case was brought in September 2022 after three years of investigation.

At the center of the case are the Trump Organization’s statements of financial condition (SFCs) spanning a decade from 2011 to 2021.

These statements are not standard financial filings, but rather marketing pieces for the Trump Organization that contained a summary of President Trump’s net worth and assets. The organization used these statements in deals, including sharing them with Deustche Bank, from which they obtained a major development loan.

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On Sept. 26, 2023, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron ruled in a summary judgment that President Trump was liable for fraud and had inflated his net worth by up to $2.2 billion in the SFCs.

However, a key disagreement in the case has been the statute of limitations. An appeals court had limited the case to transactions completed after Feb. 6, 2016, and claims accrued after July 13, 2014.

The defense opened with an argument that seven out of 10 claims brought by the attorney general fall outside the statute of limitations and must be excluded from the case.

Throughout the trial, the judge had allowed evidence from outside the statute of limitations with the caveat that state attorneys had to connect them to claims within the statute of limitations.

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Despite the summary judgement, the defense argued that no fraud had occurred at every stage of the trial, with the arguments often falling on deaf ears. In the proposed conclusion, they again devote significant space to summarizing testimony and evidence offered by bank officials and experts who stated on the witness stand they saw no evidence of fraud and no material misstatements in the SFCs.

President Trump maintains that the SFCs were not overstated, but in fact understated, as his total net worth encompassed brand value not listed on the SFCs.

Justice Engoron had originally ordered the cancellation of business certificates for LLCs under the Trump Organization umbrella and the immediate dissolution of the companies by an independent third party, but the order was stayed by an appeals court