‘He Is a Broken Person Psychologically’: Civil Fraud Verdict Hurts Trump
Former president now owes half a billion dollars in penalties
The enormous verdict in the New York civil fraud case against him will prove painful to Donald Trump in the months — and years — ahead, a number of legal experts and others agree.
The former president now owes in excess of half a billion dollars when combined with the verdict levied against him last month in the defamation case of writer E Jean Carroll.
Judge Arthur Engoron hit Trump with his biggest punishment to date on Friday, in a ruling that fined the former president $355 million for fraudulently inflating the values of his properties.
That amount rises to $463.9 million with interest. And the $83.3 million a jury ordered Trump to pay last month to Carroll — the woman who a judge said was raped by Trump — further adds to the staggering total.
Further, Trump and his company are now barred from doing business in New York state.
All of this while he campaigns to return to the White House, and faces criminal charges against him in the months and years ahead.
“This will drive him completely nuts. Donald Trump ran his organization. Any of us that ever met with him pro or con, he ran everything. He signed the checks, everything is named after him. He now has to go and say ‘I want to get this but I have to ask somebody. I want to cut this deal, let me get the monitor on the phone,’” said Rev Al Sharpton, a civil rights leader and TV host who’s known Trump for decades. “He is a broken person psychologically because now he cannot make any decisions without permission. And he’s never had that in his life.”
Rebecca Roiphe, former prosecutor in the New York district attorney’s office, agreed.
“This is just a significant sum of money and one of the other really important aspects of the ruling is that monitor, it‘s important because first of all that is one thing the other things might be stayed — the other rulings might be stayed pending appeal — but that monitor is there right now and will remain there,” she said. “And the second monitor, making sure that the compliance is in order will also be there. And that’s a blow not only to his pocketbook but also to his sense of control and ability to control his company.”
Trump’s inability to seek a loan from a bank chartered in New York will “cause a lot of pain,” according to former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann.
“Notably, for three years, Donald Trump and a whole variety of entities cannot seek to have a loan from any company, that is chartered in New York. To be clear, that is licensed to do business here. That is many, many banks,” Weissmann said. “They don’t have to be physically located here as long as they’re licensed to do business here. And the judge has barred the obtaining of loans from them.
“So that puts a real damper on the way in which Donald Trump can seek to keep his companies afloat because he cannot for three years see that as a recourse,” he added.
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