Trump Hit Where It Hurts Most

This one’s going to sting

Donald Trump took a huge hit today in the two places where it tends to hurt him most: his wallet and his business-wizard image.

The blows were delivered by a state judge in New York who ordered Trump to pay penalties of nearly $355 million for engaging in years of fraud by lying about the value of his real-estate portfolio. As part of his decision, the judge, Arthur Engoron, also barred Trump from running any New York corporation — including his own, the Trump Organization — for three years.

The company has been at the center of Trump’s public persona as a wealthy businessman for decades. And in the slimmest of silver linings, Justice Engoron did not permanently take control of it away from him. Still, the ruling — if it holds up on appeal — will have significant ramifications for the former president’s holdings.

Whatever financial pain Trump now faces was rivaled by the damage the decision dealt to his ego and to his image as a jet-setting billionaire and take-charge chief executive, a carefully crafted public face that helped to vault him first into reality-television stardom and then into the White House.

“Their complete lack of contrition and remorse border on the pathological,” Justice Engoron wrote of Trump and his co-defendants in the case, including his two adult sons, Eric and Don Jr.

The judge went on to say that the accusation of “inflating asset values to make money” was “not a mortal sin” and that Trump, his sons and two of his top aides at the company “did not rob a bank at gunpoint.” And yet, Justice Engoron concluded, “defendants are incapable of admitting the error of their ways. Instead, they adopt a ‘See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’ posture that the evidence belies.”

Trump had already been hit by a separate decision last month in which a federal jury in New York ordered him to pay the writer E. Jean Carroll more than $83 million for defaming her in 2019 after she accused him of a decades-old rape. And the enormous fraud penalties he faces, coupled with the limitations placed on his abilities to run companies in New York and to borrow money from financial institutions in the state, could put him in a financial bind.

It was not immediately clear how soon Trump and the others, who faced smaller judgments, will have to come up with the money. The provision in the ruling barring Trump from applying for any loans in New York in the next three years could make it challenging to obtain the bond he would need to post with the court as he appeals the decision.

Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, described the ruling as a “manifest injustice — plain and simple. It is the culmination of a multiyear, politically fueled witch hunt that was designed to ‘take down Donald Trump,’ before Letitia James ever stepped foot into the Attorney General’s office. Countless hours of testimony proved that there was no wrongdoing, no crime, and no victim.”

The decision by Justice Engoron capped a busy week during which important developments took place in several of the criminal cases Trump is facing. Some cut in his favor, others did not.

In perhaps the most important move, a state judge in Manhattan set a date of March 25 for Trump’s first criminal trial — on charges of falsifying business records about hush money payments to a porn star in the run-up to the 2016 election.

Of all the cases Trump is confronting as he mounts his campaign to retake the White House, the hush money case is the one that some of his advisers see as the most advantageous to him politically. They believe it could desensitize voters to the other cases Trump is facing in which he stands accused of more serious charges stemming from his mishandling of classified materials and from his efforts to disrupt the peaceful transfer of presidential power after the 2020 election.

The hush money case rests heavily on testimony from Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer who has already pleaded guilty to making the payment, as well as lying to Congress and tax-related charges. Cohen was also a key witness in the civil fraud case in Justice Engoron’s courtroom. But while Trump’s advisers were happy with their contentious cross-examination of Cohen during the fraud trial, Justice Engoron deemed him a “credible” witness.

“This factfinder does not believe that pleading guilty to perjury means that you can never tell the truth,” Justice Engoron wrote. “Michael Cohen told the truth.”

For more: Read the judge’s ruling in the civil fraud case.

Where does each criminal case stand?

Trump is at the center of at least four separate criminal investigations, at both the state and federal levels, into matters related to his business and political careers. Here is where each case currently stands.