Judge orders Trump and companies to pay nearly $355 million in civil fraud trial

Donald Trump speaks at his Mar-a-Lago estate, Friday, February 16, in Palm Beach, Florida.

Judge Arthur Engoron hit Donald Trump with his biggest punishment to date on Friday, in a ruling that fined the former president $355 million for fraudulently inflating the values of his properties.

Engoron found Trump liable for fraud, conspiracy and issuing false financial statements and false business records, and he barred him from serving as director of a company in New York for three years. But while he stopped short of dissolving the Trump Organization altogether, Engoron issued a blistering 93-page opinion that painted the former president as unremorseful and highly likely to commit fraud again.

Here are key takeaways from the decision:

Get up to speed on the ruling and more takeaways.

Former President Donald Trump and his co-defendants will likely need to come up with the full judgment of $355 million ordered by Judge Arthur Engoron Friday, with potentially more in interest, in order to move forward with an appeal, sources familiar with the matter have confirmed to CNN.

Those sources explained that this is the typical procedure required by the law, though some of the details, including the total amount to be frozen, could change. 

Trump and his lawyers said Friday they intend to appeal the decision.

That money will be held in an account pending the appellate process, which could take years to litigate.

The 9% interest Judge Engoron ordered Trump and his company to pay on the nearly $355 million judgment will continue to accrue until it’s paid per the order. 

Typically, the state requires a notice of appeal within 30 days of the judgment.

In his remarks Friday evening, President Donald Trump claimed, as he has before, that President Joe Biden was a hidden hand behind the civil fraud case in New York.

“All comes out of the DOJ, it all comes out of Biden,” Trump said. “It’s a witch hunt against his political opponent, the likes of which our country has never seen.” 

Facts First: There is no basis for Trump’s claim that Biden or the Justice Department is behind the civil case. The case was brought by New York state Attorney General Letitia James – after an investigation she began in 2019, roughly two years before Biden became president. As Trump has repeatedly noted, James, a Democrat, campaigned in 2018 on a pledge to pursue Trump. Also, federal agencies do not have jurisdiction over state cases like this.

James filed the lawsuit that led to this trial in September 2022 – about two months before Trump launched his 2024 campaign.

Former President Donald Trump speaks to the media on Friday.

In remarks from Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump slammed Judge Arthur Engoron, New York Attorney General Letitia James and vowed to appeal Friday’s ruling that orders he and his companies pay nearly $355 million.

“It’s a very sad day for, in my opinion, the county,” the former president said speaking from Palm Beach, Florida.

“We’ll appeal, we’ll be successful, I think,” Trump said

More on the ruling: The ruling in the New York civil fraud case also says Trump will be barred from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation or other legal entity in the state for three years, among other restrictions.

Earlier Friday, Trump called the ruling a sham on Truth Social.

CNN’s Kate Sullivan contributed reporting to this post.

New York Attorney General Letitia James speaks to the media on Friday, February 16.

Attorney General Letitia James celebrated today’s civil fraud ruling in remarks from New York, saying the court ruled “in favor of every hard-working American who plays by the rules.”

James added, “Donald Trump may have authored the ‘Art of the Deal,’ but he perfected the art of the steal.”

“And so after 11 weeks of trial, we showed the staggering extent of his fraud, and exactly how Donald Trump and the other defendants deceived banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions for their own personal gain,” she continued. “We proved just how much Donald Trump, his family and his company unjustly benefited from his fraud.”

James said, “I want to be clear, white collar financial fraud is not a victimless crime. When the powerful break the law, and take more than their fair share, there are fewer resources available for working people, small businesses and families.”

The attorney general thanked those in her office who helped work on the case.

“The scale and the scope of Donald Trump’s fraud is staggering, and so to is his ego, and his belief that the rules do not apply to him. Today, we are holding Donald Trump accountable,” James said.

James did not take questions from reporters and departed the room directly after her remarks, which largely reflected the written statement issued by her office earlier Friday. 

Judge Arthur Engoron presides over closing arguments in January.

The New York judge criticized one of the defenses put up by Donald Trump’s lawyers in the civil fraud case, writing in his ruling that claiming “everybody does it” is no reason to get away with fraud.

In fact, Judge Arthur Engoron argued it’s all the reason to be more vigilant in actually enforcing the rules. 

Known for his colorful writing, the judge also quoted an “ancient maxim” before saying the frauds at issue in this case “shock the conscience.”

“As an ancient maxim has it, de minimis non curat lex, the law is not concerned with trifles. Neither is this Court,” Judge Arthur Engoron wrote in his ruling. “But that is not what we have here.” “The frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience,” the judge wrote.

Remember: Trump’s attorneys argued during the trial that the attorney general’s claims against Trump had no victims — the banks were paid back and were eager to do business with Trump.

But the attorney general argued, and the judge agreed, that the fraudulent loans Trump received at lower rates had an impact on the marketplace. Plus, the law used to bring the claims against Trump does not require there to be victims of fraud in a traditional sense. 

Legal experts say former President Donald Trump is likely to use a bond, secured with his assets as collateral, as the first step in satisfying the judgment in the New York civil fraud case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James.

On Friday, Judge Arthur Engoron ordered Trump and his companies to pay nearly $355 million, which Trump has vowed to appeal.

Under a so-called appeal bond, Trump would put up a percentage of the judgment and a third-party company that is the guarantor “is on the hook for the full amount,” said Joshua Naftalis, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice in New York.

What Trump has available: It’s difficult to determine the full assets available to Trump, because his business is a privately held concern and does not regularly file reports with regulators. In a deposition taken last year as part of the case brought by James, the former president said his company had more than $400 million in available cash.

Adam Leitman Bailey, a real estate attorney in New York, said Trump likely would have to put up 10% of the judgment in cash, plus an additional fee. 

In January, a jury in a civil defamation case ordered Trump to pay $83.3 million to former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll, on top of the $5 million verdict she had already won against him last year.

Eric Trump, left, and Donald Trump Jr. wait for their father to speak at the White House in 2020.

Donald Trump’s eldest sons — who’ve essentially run the Trump Organization since 2017 — are barred from serving as executives in New York for two years, according to Judge Arthur Engoron’s order.

The Trumps will have to navigate the two-year penalty as they sort out the future of the family-run real estate company that also hasn’t filled the chief financial officer or controller positions vacated by former Trump Org. execs Allen Weisselberg and Jeff McConney.  

During closing arguments last month, Engoron questioned whether the attorney general presented any evidence that Trump’s eldest sons knew that there was fraud going on at the company — but ultimately found them liable for issuing false financial statements, falsifying business records, and conspiracy claims. 

The judge knocked Eric Trump’s credibility in his ruling, pointing out inconsistent testimony he gave at trial.  He “begrudgingly” conceded at trial that he actually knew about his father’s statements as early as 2013 “upon being confronted with copious documentary evidence conclusively demonstrating otherwise,” the judge wrote. 

Engoron also said Eric Trump unconvincingly tried to distance himself from some appraisals of Trump Org properties that offered a much lower valuation than reported on Donald Trump’s financial statements. 

More on the ruling: Eric and Donald Trump Jr. were both ordered to pay more than $4 million in disgorgement, or “ill-gotten” profits, they personally received from the 2022 sale of Trump’s hotel at the Old Post Office building in Washington DC. 

Ivanka Trump gets to keep her profits on the building sale because she was dismissed as a defendant in the case by an appeals court ahead of trial. But that didn’t stop Engoron from weighing in on her trial testimony, calling it “suspect.” 

President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference held at Mar-a-Lago on February 8, in Palm Beach, Florida.

Judge Arthur Engoron hit Donald Trump with his biggest punishment to date Friday, in a ruling that fined the former president nearly $355 million for fraudulently inflating the values of his properties.

The dollar amount dwarfed the verdict against Trump issued last month in the defamation case brought by E. Jean Carroll — an $83 million judgment — hitting home just how much the New York attorney general’s civil fraud case threatens Trump’s business empire.

Engoron found Trump liable for fraud, conspiracy, issuing false financial statements, and falsifying business records, barring him from serving as director of a company in New York for three years.

While the judge pulled back from trying to dissolve the Trump Organization altogether, Engoron issued a blistering 93-page opinion that painted the former president as unremorseful and highly likely to commit fraud again.

“This Court finds that defendants are likely to continue their fraudulent ways unless the Court grants significant injunctive relief,” Engoron wrote. 

The judge also ruled that Trump will have to pay millions in interest on the judgement amount.

Former President Donald Trump and his lawyers Christopher Kise and Alina Habba attend closing arguments in the civil fraud trial in January.

Donald Trump’s attorneys have already appealed Judge Arthur Engoron’s 2023 summary judgment that found the former president liable for fraud — and the former president’s attorneys are already planning to appeal Friday’s decision, too.

Trump attorney Christopher Kise responded to Engoron’s ruling in a statement Friday, saying the court “ignored the law, ignored the facts.”

Kise added Trump will appeal and “remains confident the Appellate Division will ultimately correct the innumerable and catastrophic errors made.”

During the 11-week trial, Trump’s attorneys repeatedly criticized Engoron’s handling of the case and raised objections “for the record” and a potential appeal. 

Engoron often acknowledged the likelihood of an appeal during the trial.

The ruling is likely to be tied up in the courts on appeal for a long time, and Engoron’s ruling Friday was written with an eye toward surviving an appellate challenge.

In his ruling that orders Donald Trump to pay nearly $355 million in profits from his fraud, Judge Arthur Engoron also ruled that the former president will have to pay interest on that money, dating back several years.

The interest could add close to $100 million to the amount Trump is liable for.

The judge broke down the $354,868,678 in disgorgement into three parts:

All of the prejudgment interest owed “shall be at the rate of nine percent per annum, except where otherwise provided by statute,” the judge wrote.  

In a statement on X, New York Attorney General Letitia James cited a higher total amount by including the interest as well as the money owed by Trump’s two adult sons and former CFO.

“In a massive victory, we won our case against Donald Trump for engaging in years of incredible financial fraud to enrich himself,” she wrote. “Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., Eric Trump, and his former executives must pay over $450 million in disgorgement and interest.”

Former President Donald Trump sits in the courtroom during his civil fraud trial in January.

Former President Donald Trump on Friday blasted a ruling by a judge ordering him and his companies to pay nearly $355 million in the New York civil fraud case and continued claiming, without evidence, he had been politically targeted because he’s running for president.  

“This ‘decision’ is a Complete and Total SHAM,” Trump posted on Truth Social in his first public comments following the ruling.  

Trump said in a separate post, “The Democrat Club-controlled Judge Engoron has already been reversed four times on this case, a shameful record, and he will be reversed again. We cannot let injustice stand, and will fight Crooked Joe Biden’s weaponized persecution at every step.”

New York Attorney General Letitia James exits the courtroom during the civil fraud trial in November.

New York Attorney General Letitia James celebrated Friday’s ruling against the Trumps.

In a separate statement, she referred to the order against Trump and his companies as a “tremendous victory.” The attorney general said the ruling proves “no one is above the law.”

James is expected to speak to reporters this afternoon.

While Judge Arthur Engoron did not dissolve the business certificates for the Trump Organization, as he had initially laid out, he did order several restrictions and stipulations to be enacted for the next few years.

Engoron wrote that a monitor he put in place for the company was to stay in place for at least three years.

The monitor, who has access to records and the internal workings of the business, is a retired federal judge who specialized in high-stakes, high-profile matters, according to Elie Honig, a former federal prosecutor and CNN senior legal analyst.

The monitor issued a report a few weeks ago that said she found inconsistencies in her initial review of the company. That could lead to more trouble for the Trump Organization, Honig said.

“But if the goal is to rehabilitate the company, then this is the right person for it,” Honig said.

CNN’s Jeremy Herb contributed reporting to this post.

An aerial view of Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, in August 2022.

Judge Arthur Engoron cited Donald Trump’s valuation of Mar-a-Lago on his financial statements as one of the properties where the former president committed fraud — while also chiding the former president for claiming his Florida resort was worth more than $1 billion. 

Engoron wrote that Trump’s 2002 deed gave away the right to use Mar-a-Lago as a single-family residence, meaning that Trump paid significantly lower property taxes and that it could not be valued as highly as he claimed.

In a footnote, Engoron noted of Trump and the deed: “A fact of which he is well aware, having signed the deed himself.”

“There is no legal gray area surrounding the permanent nature of the deed restrictions,” Engoron later wrote in his ruling. “Accordingly, there can be no mistake that Donald Trump’s valuation of Mar-a-Lago from 2011-2021 was fraudulent.”

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi at a biotech tour in Boston, on February 12.  

One Democratic lawmaker who questioned Michel Cohen at a hearing where he testified that Donald Trump had inflated his assets called the ruling appropriate and said the evidence against the former president and others is “pretty overwhelming.”

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said the ruling was “a natural and logical extension of what happened back in February 2019” during Cohen’s testimony.

Some background: During that hearing, Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, testified about how the Trump Organization manipulated figures to change the value of the company.

He also indicated that his former client potentially committed a variety of financial crimes from bank to tax fraud in order to secure loans and even to move up in Forbes magazine’s rankings of the very rich.

Ivanka Trump walks the hallway as she attends the Trump Organization civil fraud trial, in New York, in November 2023.

While calling her a “thoughtful” and “poised witness,” Judge Arthur Engoron questioned Ivanka Trump’s inability to recall details of several projects she worked on despite documents presented in court showing otherwise.

Engoron specifically mentioned her inability to recollect her work on the Old Post Office building in Washington, DC, and the loans issued by Deutsche Bank.

More background: Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump’s eldest daughter, was dismissed as a defendant in this case by an appellate court ruling in June, but was subpoenaed to testify by the New York attorney general’s office.

Michael Cohen attends the Trump Organization civil fraud trial in New York State Supreme Court in the Manhattan borough of New York City, in October 2023.

Judge Arthur Engoron recapped Michael Cohen’s theatrical trial testimony, acknowledging Cohen’s credibility issues but saying he ultimately believed him.

Engoron pushed back on Trump’s narrative that Cohen was a star witness for the attorney general’s office.

“Michael Cohen was an important witness on behalf of the plaintiff, although hardly the linchpin that defendants have attempted to portray him to be,” Engoron said.

The judge said the testimony from Trump’s former fixer was compromised by his previous perjury plea in another case and some “seeming contradictions” in what he said at this trial, but Engoron believed Cohen when he testified that “Trump did not expressly direct him to reverse engineer financial statements, he ordered him to do so indirectly, in his ‘mob voice.’”

Judge Arthur Engoron found Donald Trump liable for issuing false financial statements, falsifying business records, and conspiracy, all part of a lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James.

James accused Trump and his co-defendants of fraudulently inflating the value of his assets to obtain more favorable loan and insurance rates.

Remember: Before the three-month-long trial started, Engoron had already found Trump and his co-defendants liable for persistent and repeated fraud.

Former Trump Organization Executive Allen Weisselberg sits in the courtroom during the civil fraud trial of former President Donald Trump at New York State Supreme Court on October 10, 2023 in New York City. 

Judge Arthur Engoron found former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg and former controller Jeffrey McConney liable for multiple civil fraud counts in New York, including issuing false financial statements, falsifying business records, insurance fraud and conspiracy. 

He permanently banned Weisselberg and McConney from serving in the financial control function of any New York corporation or business, and banned them from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation for three years. 

Weisselberg was also fined $1 million in the ruling.