2023 is definitely not Donald Trump’s year. On Tuesday, a New York judge ruled in the state attorney general’s $250 million lawsuit against the former President. Judge Arthur Engoron found that Mr. Trump and his company committed repeated acts of fraud for years.
According to the ruling, Trump allegedly lied to banks and insurers by both overvaluing and undervaluing his assets when he needed to. He also exaggerated his net worth to the tune of billions of dollars. Judge Arthur Engoron pointed to one instance where Trump exaggerated the size of his New York apartment to pump up its value and repeatedly claimed it was over 30,000 feet when it was actually a third of that size. “A discrepancy of this order of magnitude, by a real estate developer sizing up his own living space of decades, can only be considered fraud,” Engoron wrote… whew!
On top of the ruling, Judge Arthur Engoron also made the bombshell decision to cancel the New York business certificates of Trump, as well as the Trump Organization, and other defendants, including two of his sons, CNBC notes. As of right now, it’s unclear whether Engoron’s decision means that the Trump Organization and related entities will have to completely stop doing business in New York until further notice or whether the companies can be legally reconstituted later.
Engoron’s ruling also denied Trump’s motion for summary judgment that argued that the lawsuit brought on by New York Attorney General Letitia James’ should be dismissed. Instead, Engoron sanctioned Trump’s attorneys $7,500 each for making legal arguments that had already been rejected twice, the news site notes.
As a result of the ruling, this now allows the civil trial to begin next week. James is seeking $250 million in damages in the case and wants Trump and his two adult sons barred from doing business in the state.
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Donald Trump’s Reaction
In a statement posted Tuesday on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump blasted the state attorney general and the judge. He said,
“My Civil Rights have been violated, and some Appellate Court, whether Federal or State, must reverse this horrible, un-American decision.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s lead attorney in the case, Christopher Kise, has also called the ruling “outrageous” and said it was “completely disconnected from the facts and governing law.” He also said Engoron had “disregarded the viewpoint of those actually involved in the loan transactions who testified there was nothing misleading, there was no fraud, and the transactions were all highly profitable.”