Former President Donald Trump is on trial in New York in a $370 million civil lawsuit that could alter the personal fortune and real estate empire that helped propel Trump to the White House.
Trump, his sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. , as well as other top executives of the Trump Organization, are accused through New York Attorney General Letitia James of participating in a decade-long scheme in which they used “numerous acts of fraud and misrepresentation” to inflate Trump’s net worth for more favorable loan terms. The lawsuit comes after the judgment in the case was based on a partial abstract ruling that Trump had submitted “fraudulent valuations” of his assets, leaving the trial to what follows moves and what punishment, if any, the defendants deserve to receive.
The former president has denied any wrongdoing and his lawyers have argued that Trump’s allegedly inflated evaluations were a product of his abilities.
A day after New York Attorney General Letitia James cited a ruling involving “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli in a lifetime housing ban for Donald Trump, a defense attorney responded in a letter to the court calling the comparison “inappropriate and irresponsible. “
The New York AG said Tuesday that a federal appeals court decision upholding a lifetime industry ban for Shkreli should convince Judge Arthur Engoron to impose a lifetime real estate ban on Trump.
Defense attorney Clifford Robert, in response, wrote Wednesday that “the absurdity of the attorney general’s new effort would be almost comical without the sobering long-term consequences of his brazen abuse of power. “
Robert argued that Trump’s fraud case lacked witnesses, complaints, and victims compared to Shkreli’s case.
In an interview with ABC News, Trump’s lawyer, Chris Kise, said the ruling in the Trump case could have far-reaching implications for New York’s business community.
All the CEOs of major Wall Street banks and players are speaking out now before the Attorney General’s shocking and tyrannical interference in the capital markets jeopardizes any and all New York business transactions,” Kise said.
The New York attorney general’s office said a federal appeals court ruling upholding a lifetime ban from the industry for disgraced “pharmaceutical brother” Martin Shkreli convinced Judge Arthur Engoron to impose a lifetime ban. life on real estate to Donald Trump.
In a letter to Judge Engoron, U. S. Attorney Colleen Faherty cited Tuesday’s ruling in the Shkreli case to justify the New York General Assembly’s request to ban the former president for life from New York’s royal estate.
According to Faherty, New York State Act 63(12), which was used in the New York attorney general’s lawsuits against Trump and Shkreli, gives the court the ability to “issue a complete and permanent ban on a specific industry. “
“63(12) is the Swiss Army knife of AGArray,” said Tristan Snell, a former lawyer with the New York attorney general’s office who used the law to sue Trump over the now-defunct real estate seminar called Trump University. “If you don’t have legislation like this, you allow lies and misrepresentations to run rampant. “
A final resolution in Trump’s civil fraud case is expected later this month.
New York Attorney General Letitia James on Friday released a video of former President Trump’s deposition in the case in April 2023.
The video of the deposition, the transcript of which was released through the attorney general in August 2023, was released under a public records request.
As ABC News reported in August, Trump in his statement referred to his real estate portfolio as “the Mona Lisa of real estate” and warned that his assets were worth far more than what they indicated in his statements about the financial situation that are at the center of the new York AGM case.
The videotaped statement appears to be a preview of Trump’s testimony at this month’s trial, in which he bragged about his finances and pleaded “an innocent man. “
New York’s highest court has upheld the limited gag order in Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial.
“On the Court’s own initiative, the appeal was dismissed, without costs, because a really broad constitutional question was not directly involved. The motion for an appeal is still dismissed because it is academic,” the New York Court of Appeals said in a two-sentence ruling. Ruling published Tuesday.
The gag order barred Trump and his lawyers from commenting on Judge Arthur Engoron’s staff during the former president’s 11-week civil fraud trial.
A decision in the case is expected later this month, after closing arguments wrapped up last week.
Donald Trump Jr. , in his testimony for the defense, promoted the Trump Organization’s paintings at a landfill site in the Bronx, New York, on an “absolutely incredible” golf course.
“It’s raw land. It’s been that way for a long time,” Trump Jr. said of the original Trump Links Ferry Point site near the Whitestone Bridge.
“People were supposedly trying to build a golf course for years,” Trump Jr. said about previous efforts to build the facility, describing it as an “old-school New York mob job” where people got paid to move dirt around but not build anything.
Trump Jr. said that once his father got involved in the project, the site was successfully transformed in a matter of months.