A New York appeals court on Thursday dismissed a $500 million civil fraud penalty against President Donald Trump and his companies for routinely over-valuing their properties in financial statements.
Some judges of the state Appellate Division’s First Department agreed that Trump and his companies had engaged in fraud, but agreed with their colleagues that the award was an “excessive fine.”
“(W)hile harm certainly occurred, it was not the cataclysmic harm that can justify a nearly half billion-dollar award to the State,” two of the judges wrote.
Eric Trump celebrated the ruling in a phone interview with NBC News.
“This is the biggest victory in the world. We always knew this was going to happen. The case is totally won and it’s a big day for us,” the president’s son said.
A spokesperson for the New York A.G.’s office did not immediately comment.
The 323-page ruling by the mid-level appeals court is comprised of three separate opinions from the five judges on the panel, and showed they were deeply divided. Two of the judges were in favor of upholding the fraud finding but dismissing the financial penalties, two of the judges were in favor of ordering a new trial, and one of the judges would have dismissed the case.
Some members of the panel had expressed concern with the size of the judgment at a hearing on the appeal in September of last year, with one calling it “troubling.”
Trump’s attorneys had contended he shouldn’t have to pay anything in damages, and that the businesses he was accused of defrauding were “delighted with these transactions” and “benefited enormously” from them. They faulted the judge for not relying on their client’s expertise in valuing properties, and alleged that some of the discrepancies the judge pointed to were outside of the statute of limitations for the case and should not be used.
The mid-level appeals court ruling can be challenged at the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals.
Judge Arthur Engoron handed down his judgment against Trump in early 2024 after finding he and his companies had engaged in “repeated and persistent fraud.”
The award came after a months-long trial that included testimony from the then-former and now current president.
The case centered on allegations from New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office that Trump lied to banks and insurers by both overvaluing and undervaluing his assets when it was to his benefit ,exaggerating his net worth to the tune of billions of dollars.
The scheme enabled Trump to obtain bank loans and insurance policies at rates that he otherwise wouldn’t have been entitled to, and as a result he “reaped hundreds of millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains,” James’ office said.
Trump maintained his financial statements were conservative, and he repeatedly alleged the Democratic attorney general’s case was politically motivated.
Engoron summarized Trump’s defense as claiming that “the documents do not say what they say; that there is no such thing as ‘objective’ value; and that, essentially, the Court should not believe its own eyes.”
He also chided Trump and his companies for not taking any responsibility for their actions.
“Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological,” Engoron wrote in his decision on the case. “They are accused only of inflating asset values to make more money. The documents prove this over and over again. This is a venial sin, not a mortal sin. Defendants did not commit murder or arson. They did not rob a bank at gunpoint. Donald Trump is not Bernard Madoff. Yet, defendants are incapable of admitting the error of their ways.”
The award was initially entered as a $464 million judgment, but it has continued to grow in the months since because of interest. Trump is responsible for the vast majority of the judgment, and the amount he’d been ordered to pay has been increasing by over $100,000 a day.
By mid-June, Trump was on the hook for $507 million while his co-defendants owed over $11 million.
To secure the judgment while he appealed, Trump had been expected to have to post a bond for about $550 million — the full amount of the judgment plus interest. Trump’s attorneys argued that coming up with that much cash was a “practical impossibility,” and the Appellate Division reduced the size of the bond to $175 million. Trump posted the bond in March of last year.
Trump is also appealing two other judgments totaling about $90 million after writer E. Jean Carroll successfully sued him for allegedly sexually abusing and defaming her. Trump has denied the allegations in both of her lawsuits.
