The News
Former U.S. President Donald Trump must pay nearly $355 million in damages, a judge ruled Friday. He and his sons were also barred from serving in top roles at the company for the next three years.
The months-long trial, the result of a multi-year investigation into the Trump family’s businesses, examined whether the Trump Organization defrauded banks and insurance companies by exaggerating its wealth and assets. Trump’s sons, Don Jr. and Eric, were each ordered to pay $4 million after being found liable on multiple counts of fraud.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, who brought the case, sought $370 million in damages and to bar Trump from doing business in the state.
Judge Arthur Engoron previously ruled that Trump and his co-defendants committed “persistent and repeated” fraud before the bench trial began. The proceedings were to determine how much the organization would have to pay in damages.
SIGNALS
Trump’s candidacy and legal woes collided in this case
This trial was “simultaneously a political circus and a deadly serious legal proceeding,” New Yorker columnist John Cassidy wrote, with Trump’s lawyers repeatedly deriding the case as “political agenda.” Trump was barred from delivering his own closing arguments because his attorneys would not agree to get him to promise not to “deliver a campaign speech.” Though Engoron ultimately let him speak for five minutes before cutting him off, the restriction fueled Trump’s claim that his First Amendment rights were being infringed upon for political purposes.
This case was the first in which Trump was issued a gag order, which he claimed unconstitutionally prevented him from defending himself publicly while campaigning. He was fined a total of $15,000 for violating the order, and has since been gagged in a separate criminal case which alleges that he tried to subvert the 2020 election results.
Case stirred up threats toward judge, attorney general, and clerk
The gag order followed Trump’s public comments disparaging one of Judge Engoron’s law clerks, who became a target of threats. Engoron was also targeted by a “swatting incident” the morning of the trial’s closing statements after Trump claimed on Truth Social that the judge was trying to “screw” him. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing Trump’s Jan. 6 election interference case, was the victim of a separate swatting incident, while NY Attorney General Letitia James has received numerous threats. Fear is “the new normal” for judges, a former California Superior Court Judge told MSNBC, with Trump’s verbal attacks on court staff no longer “dog whistles” but “bullhorns” to his supporters.
Trump used trial as campaign fundraising fodder
The former president used the case “as a campaign platform to raise money from supporters” and to argue that the court mistreated him, The Wall Street Journal reported. Trump has used his previous legal troubles to drum up support for his campaign. NBC News reported that “Trump’s best online fundraising days over the first six months of the year coincided with his indictments and arraignments.”