“Donald Trump is no longer in business.”
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron ruled Tuesday that the Trump Organization is guilty of a decade of systemic fraud. The evidence is so plain that edjudicating the facts at trial is unneeded. Engoron also revoked its state business licenses and ordered it dissolved (Washington Post):
A judge overseeing a $250 million lawsuit against Donald Trump ruled the former president and his company committed fraud by inflating his net worth in business transactions, narrowing the scope of what the state’s attorney general must prove at an upcoming civil trial.
New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron also ordered the cancellation of Trump business certificates and imposed sanctions on attorneys representing him, two of his adult children, two other company executives and the business for repeating arguments that failed multiple times previously and were called “borderline frivolous.”
NEW: If I am reading this right, Judge Engoron has found that Donald Trump committed fraud and has ordered the cancellation of all of his New York business certificates and the dissolution of the Trump Organization. pic.twitter.com/k2nRcK3L37
— Andrew Feinberg (@AndrewFeinberg) September 26, 2023
Trump will appeal, of course. All the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Until someone informs him that his friends on the Roberts court have no jursdiction in a New York state civil case. Trump and his boys will digitally scream how unfair they’ve been treated. As predictably as the sunrise, they’re doing that already:
“Nothing like this has ever happened in our Country before. My Civil Rights have been violated, and some Appellate Court, whether Federal or State, must reverse this horrible, un-American decision. If they can do this to me, they can do this to YOU!”
Those who’ve spent a decade running a fraudulent business and overestimating its worth to the tune of billions know who YOU are.
Eric Trump says that Judge Engoron “ruled” that Mar-a-Lago is worth only $18 million. But he was citing the appraisal of the Palm Beach County Assessor. Eric wouldn’t know a receipt if he ate it. pic.twitter.com/fZhWlSQrow
— Weisselberger (@weisselbergers) September 26, 2023
New York Attorney General Letitia James has already won her case to secure monetrary damages against the Trump Organization. The trial set to start on October 2 now will be about how much the Trumps will pay. James is seeking $250 million.
In pre-trial hearings before the ruling, Trump lawyer Christopher Kise told the judge that the former president is “an investment genius” and “probably one of the most successful real estate developers in the country”.
“President Trump is a master at finding value where others see nothing,” Kise told Engoron.
In his ruling, it is clear that Engoron sees things differently.
“In defendants’ word: rent-regulated apartments are worth the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unrestricted land; restrictions can evaporate into thin air; a disclaimer by one party casting responsibility on another party exonerates the other party’s lies,” Engoron wrote.
“This is a fantasy world, not a real world.”
Judge’s response to Trump testifying that he could get the Saudis to pay him three times market value for his properties. pic.twitter.com/ZJLInvE7MR
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) September 27, 2023
David Cay Johnston has reported on Trump and his dealings for years. Trump is out of business, he explains bluntly:
Worse, the self-proclaimed multibillionaire may soon be personally bankrupt as a result, stripped of just about everything because for years he engaged in calculated bank fraud and insurance fraud by inflating the value of his properties, a judge ruled Tuesday.
His gaudy Trump Tower apartment, his golf courses, his Boeing 757 jet and even Mar-a-Lago could all be disposed of by a court-appointed monitor, leaving Trump with not much more than his pensions as a one term president and a television performer.
None of this is new to anyone who has watched Trump over the years:
In 2015 Trump claimed his net worth was north of $10 billion. When he became president, he asked if he could file his federally required financial disclosure statements without signing them under penalty of perjury. That request was denied. The statement Trump then filed, by my counting, showed a net worth of not much more than $1 billion, but was based on fantastical assertions of value.
News organizations, except DCReport, told their audiences next to nothing about how from June 2015 to January 2017 Trump’s claimed net worth fell by roughly 90 percent.
Trump’s chances of winning an appeal, Johnston estimates at “between zero and nothing.”
Creditors, any fines due the state because of the fraud, and taxes will be paid first from sales of Trump properties.
The various properties are likely to be sold at fire sale prices and certainly not for top dollar when liquidation begins, probably after all appeals are exhausted.
Among these properties is the portion of Trump Tower that Trump still owns and leases to businesses as office and retail space; his own triplex apartment there; his golf courses; and Mar-a-Lago, the Florida mansion he bought in a corrupt mortgage deal decades ago. He also has deals to license his name on buildings and businesses, which similarly he can no longer operate and whose profits he must give up.
The fact that Trump assigned values two, four, ten times and more above their actual values indicates that once all of the priority bills are paid there will be little to nothing left for Trump.
Karma’s a bitch.