In a $250 million lawsuit brought by the state attorney general against Donald Trump and his business, a New York judge determined on Tuesday that the former president had engaged in years-long patterns of deception.
The decision, which permits the civil trial to start next week, claims that Trump deceived banks and insurers by inflating his net worth by millions of dollars while also overvaluing and undervaluing his assets when it suited him.
According to Judge Arthur Engoron’s 35-page decision, Trump lied about his financial situation repeatedly so that he could obtain better loan conditions and insurance rates. The legal defenses offered by Trump for his words are grounded in “a fantasy world, not the real world,” according to Engoron.
The court continued, stating that the case was primarily a “documents case,” and that “the documents here clearly include fraudulent valuations that defendants utilized for their business, satisfying [the attorney general’s] burden of establishing liability as a matter of law against defendants.” The defendants’ response is that the documents don’t really say what they claim to, there is no such thing as “objective value,” and that the court shouldn’t simply believe its own eyes.
The arguments Donald Trump makes in his sworn deposition “have no legal or factual basis whatsoever,” continued Engoron.
When Trump frequently claimed that his New York apartment was over 30,000 square feet when in reality it was about a third of that size, the judge pointed out that he had overstated its size to increase its worth.
A real estate developer measuring up his own living space over decades cannot avoid being accused of fraud, according to Engoron.
The judge ruled that Donald Trump, his sons Don Jr. and Eric, & their businesses were all guilty of fraud.
Additionally, he rejected Trump’s petition for summary judgment, which demanded the dismissal of Letitia James, the attorney general of New York,’s complaint. For presenting legal defenses that had already been rejected twice, Engoron fined Trump’s legal team $7,500 each.
The judge additionally directed that the trial will be used to resolve the case’s lingering issues.
NBC has requested a reaction from James’ office and Trump’s legal team.
Insisting that the lawsuit is a product of a partisan “witch hunt” against him, Trump has vigorously denied any wrongdoing. He referred to Engoron as a “Trump Hater beyond even A.G. James” in a social media post on Monday.
Monday is when the trial is supposed to begin. Due to the bench trial format, there will be no jury and just the judge to decide the matter.