Donald Trump To Pay $112K Per Day In NY Civil Trial Fraud Interest; Ex-POTUS Has 30 Days To Post $466M Bond For Appeal Or Assets Could Be Seized – Update
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UPDATE, 3:57PM: Donald Trump is going to have to sell a lot of Mar-a-Lago memberships to meet his debt to the state of New York.
With a final judgment officially entered today into the court docket on the now-$454 million fine the former president and family owe from his civil fraud trial, Team Trump is looking at interest of $114,554 a day.
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“This judgment shall bear interest from the date of its entry at the statutory rate of 9% per annum,” wrote NY Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron yesterday in the document made public today (read it here).
Breaking it down, that’s $111,984 every 24 hours for the ex-Celebrity Apprentice host himself. The sum is based on the total judgment delivered by Judge Engoron of $354.9 million plus the $100 million already accrued in pre-judgment interest for the financial sleight-of-hand Trump, his sons and executives engaged in for decades with banks and more for favorable loans.
Having failed earlier this week to get the judgment stayed for 30 days, Trump and his fellow dependents will now have 30 days to file an appeal. An appeal that the Trumps lawyers said they would be filing ASAP when the judgment first came down last week. Point of legal fact: No appeal has been filed yet, though today’s final judgment may light a bit of a fire on the defendants to get moving.
Perhaps that’s because the Trumps will have to put up the money or a bond to cover the hundreds of millions they have been fined before any appeal can kick in. Perhaps the self-declared billionaire doesn’t have $454 million they can get their hands on.
If Team Trump can’t come up with the dough, New York Attorney General Letita James has said she will consider seizing assets AKA real estate AKA Trump Tower.
Already having savored the February 16 decision, and having won a corruption trial against Trump ally and former NRA leader Wayne LaPierre today, NY AG James took to social media Friday to lay it all out for Trump in the starkest terms:
$464,576,230.62
— NY AG James (@NewYorkStateAG) February 23, 2024
Also defendants in the civil trial, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr will have to pay $1,149 per day. Ex-Trump Organization finance chief Allen Weisselberg will fork out $272.
In that context, and with all the other court cases and indictments against him, Donald Trump is still widely expected to win the South Carolina in a landslide tomorrow.
By the way, memberships at Trump’s Florida club go for about $200,000 per year.
PREVIOUSLY, FEB 16 PM: Former President Donald Trump went on a tear on social media Friday in the wake of a New York judge’s ruling that he and other defendants pay $354.9 million in a civil fraud case.
In 16 written and video posts on Truth Social, his social media platform, Trump called the ruling an “Election Interference and tyrannical Abuse of Power by a Crooked Judge and Crooked Attorney General.”
“There were no victims, and not one person testified there was any fraud,” Trump wrote, adding that the ruling was a “shocking and corrupt interference in the free markets for political gain.”
Trump’s campaign also sent out a series of statements from the former president, including one in which he called the proceedings a “complete and total sham” and accused the case of being “Crooked Joe Biden’s weaponized persecution.” But the case was brought in New York state by the attorney general, Tish James, not the federal government.
Trump and his legal team are appealing the decision.
James, meanwhile, said that “today justice has been served. Today we prove that no one is above the law, no matter how rich, powerful or politically connected you are. Everyone must play by the same rules.”
PREVIOUSLY: In another courtroom blow, Donald Trump has been ordered to pay $354.9 million in damages in a ruling Friday by a New York judge.
When judgments against other defendants such as Donald Trump Jr are added up, the total set by Judge Arthur Engoron collectively is $362 million. That sum is very close to the judgment of $370 million that Attorney General Letitia James was seeking.
Read the order against Trump here.
Additionally, while it likely won’t hurt his hold on the Republican nomination, Trump can now not serve as an officer or director of any corporation or other legal entity in New York State for three years, or seek loans. His sons, Donald Jr and Eric, cannot serve in any business in the Empire State for two years, the 92-page ruling says.
Additionally, Engoron ordered today “that an Independent Director of Compliance be installed at the Trump Organization.”
Promising a quick appeal, Trump’s team today said “this verdict is a manifest injustice – plain and simple.” It is unclear right now if the ex-POTUS will have to put up a multimillion-dollar bond before that appeal is allowed to commence.
Overall, while not the worst possible result for Trump, Friday’s anticipated order is pretty bracing.
“In order to borrow more and at lower rates, defendants submitted blatantly false financial data to the accountants, resulting in fraudulent financial statements,” Engoron wrote Friday in a ruling that had reporters and political operatives refreshing the court website every few seconds. “When confronted at trial with the statements, defendants’ fact and expert witnesses simply denied reality, and defendants failed to accept responsibility or to impose internal controls to prevent future recurrences.”
Engoron had already found Trump liable for defrauding banks in a summary judgment decision last September. What was left was a bench trial to essentially determine what penalty Trump and his businesses would face.
As correspondents read out the information from their phones on-air, CNN and MSNBC went live with coverage seconds after the ruling was released on the court docket. Fox News followed several minutes later.
The whole trial turned into a contentious spectacle, as the former president attended on a number of days. Throughout that process, the judge sanctioned Trump and his attorneys for frequent online and verbal attacks on his staff.
New York AG James filed a civil fraud lawsuit in 2022 against Trump, his companies and two of his children. James alleged a scheme over 10 years to engage in fraudulent practices that benefited the Trumps and the company to the tune of $250 million. As was made clear in testimony during the trial, banks were happy to loan the Trumps money even when the figures were questioned.
In his ruling last year, Judge Engoron concluded that Trump and his company, as well as executives, exaggerated values on financial documents, allowing for better loan terms and other business benefits
Trump testified during the proceedings, going on several rants about the prosecution and the judge. Unsurprisingly, Trump also called the whole trial “fraudulent.”
“This crooked judgment will be a dark and sad day for the justice system in New York State,” Trump preemptively wrote on social media earlier this week. “No damages, no victims – only success. Case already won on appeal …witch hunt!!! Election interference!!!,” the rant continued.
The former president is incorrect that the case has been won on appeal. It has actually not officially been appealed.
The ruling could have wiped out Trump and his sons’ ability to do business in the Empire State for years, the one-time real estate mogul’s attorneys argued in no small part that no one really lost money or was hurt by the inflated figures put forth by the Trump Organization over the years to banks and more. However, while Trump and his sons are now limited by today’s judgments, Judge Engoron did roll back the “corporate death penalty” that would have completely shut down the family and their businesses.
Facing almost 100 indictments, Trump is the presumptive GOP presidential nominee for a 2024 rematch with Joe Biden. A New York judge yesterday announced that Trump’s criminal trial will begin on March 25, three weeks after the multi-primary Super Tuesday. The trial is centered on the falsification of Trump business records tied to the hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels in advance of the 2016 election.
In other court cases, Trump earlier this week asked the Supreme Court for another halt in his January 6 election conspiracy case, as his lawyers worked on an appeal of a decision that soundly rejected his claims of presidential immunity. On January 26, a New York jury determined that Trump has to pay E. Jean Carroll over $83 million for defaming her from the White House and elsewhere over the magazine writer’s claims he sexually assaulted her in a department store change room in the 1990s.
Trump was found liable in May 2023 of sexual abusing and defaming Carroll. The former Elle columnist was awarded $5 million in that matter. Trump’s attorneys have declared they plan to appeal the defamation verdict.
Trump himself has repeatedly said he will be spending more time in courtrooms this year than on the campaign trail.
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