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Trump Lawyer Alina Habba slammed the devastating ruling that the former president pay a whopping $355 million in the New York civil fraud trail, dealing a crushing blow to the man who has long touted his vast real estate empire. ‘This verdict is a manifest injustice – plain and simple,’ Alina blasted the decision in a statement provided to DailyMail.com. ‘It is the culmination of a multi-year, politically fueled witch hunt that was designed to “take down Donald Trump,” before Letitia james ever stepped foot into the Attorney General’s office.’
Habba goes on that countless hours of testimony ‘proved that there was no wrongdoing, no crime, and no victim.’ Trump’s legal team is vowing to appeal the decision. ‘Let me make one thing perfectly clear: this is not just about Donald Trump – if this decision stands, it will serve as a signal to every single American that New York is no longer open for business,’ Habba said. As part of the decision, Donald Trump and his two adult sons Don Jr. and Eric Trump were also barred from serving in a top position in a New York company for three years. Eric and Don Jr. were also ordered to pay more than $4 million each.
It follows an explosive three-month court case in which Trump was accused of massively inflating the values of his properties, including Mar-a-Lago and a Trump Tower penthouse, to obtain favorable terms on loans from banks. The former president gave evidence during the trial and railed against the judge and prosecutor, arguing he had done nothing wrong and was being persecuted by political opponents. Judge Arthur Engoron had already found Trump, and his sons Don Jr. and Eric, liable for fraud and the trial was to determine how much they should pay.
The civil fraud case was brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James. She had demanded over $370 million from Trump and that he be barred from doing business in the state of New York. James accused Trump and his family businesses of overstating his net worth by billions of dollars. She sought to permanently ban Trump from New York’s real estate industry and sharply limit his ability to do business in the state.
During the case, Trump lambasted James, an elected Democrat, as partisan, ‘racist’ and ‘corrupt’. He also conducted an ongoing feud with Judge Engoron and his clerk, which led to the former president being subjected to a gag order. In closing arguments on January 11 Trump defied the judge and gave a six-minute diatribe after his lawyers spoke. ‘I am an innocent man,’ Trump protested. ‘I’m being persecuted by someone (James) running for office. What’s happened here, sir, is a fraud on me.’
Trump said he was being targeted by officials who ‘want to make sure I don’t win again.’ Judge Engoron told Trump’s lawyer Chris Kise to ‘control your client’. James argued a massive fine was warranted due to the former president’s ‘myriad deceptive schemes’ to ‘inflate asset values and conceal facts.’ She claimed the alleged fraud schemes were ‘so outrageous that they belie innocent explanation.’ Trump’s attorneys fired back, saying that James had ‘no evidence’ and insisted there was not a single witness who backed up the allegations. They also argued there were ‘no victims’ as banks were fully repaid.
The court valued Mar-a-Lago at between $18 million and $27.6 million based on the Palm Beach County tax appraiser’s estimates. One Trump valuation when securing a loan put the value at 2,300 per cent of that. During the case Trump claimed Mar-a-Lago was really worth up to $1.5 billion. Another argument was over the former president’s penthouse in Trump Tower. Prosecutors said Trump inflated its value by about $200 million after tripling the estimate of the square footage to 30,000 sq ft. Months before the trial the former president came face-to-face with James when he sat for a deposition at her Manhattan office.
Video of the seven-hour, closed-door session showed the Republican presidential frontrunner attacking the lawsuit as a ‘disgrace’ and ‘a terrible thing.’ Sitting with arms folded Trump complained that he was being forced to ‘justify myself to you’ after decades of success building a real estate empire. He added that banks ‘want to do business with me because I’m rich’ and that New York authorities ‘spend all their time investigating me, instead of stopping violent crime in the streets.’ Judge Engoron ruled last year that Trump had committed fraud in sending 11 years of allegedly inflated estimates of his net worth to Deutsche Bank and others.
However, some legal experts have expressed concern that victory for James could make it easier for courts to wipe out companies in the future. Adam Leitman Bailey, a New York real estate lawyer, said it would ‘set a horrible precedent’. Under the New York anti-fraud statute, known as Executive Law 63(12), there have been only a handful of cases resulting in a ‘dissolution,’ and in all of those, there were victims and losses. Trump’s was the only big business that was threatened with a shutdown without a showing of obvious victims and major losses.
