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Trump ordered to pay $355 million in penalties in New York Fraud case. He's also banned from operating any business in New York for three years, the Trump Organization is banned from borrowing money from any financial institution registered in New York for three years, and Eric and Don Jr each get their own $4 million dollar fines, and the former CFO Alan Wiesselberg owes a million. However the court also reverses its earlier ruling to cancel defendant's business certificates (aka the "corporate death penalty"). Instead an Independent Monitor will continue at the Trump Organisation for three years to ensure that it meets its financial reporting obligations.
All the penalties come with interest, so the defendants collectively owe around $450 million, not counting the $80+ million owed to E Jean Carroll. Even for Trump, that's serious money. Trump has of course said he will appeal, but to do so he will need to put up the full amount in bond first, and it's not clear he has the liquidity to do that - and as mentioned above he's now limited in his ability to borrow. And even if he manages to get the cash together, it doesn't seem to me that his prospects on appeal are at all good. Higher courts typically defer to the trial court's fact-finding, and Judge Engoron is not kind in his assessment of the credibility of Trump and his witnesses.
And what are the odds he will pay? Probably not that good. AFIK, no one has collected on the Alex Jones Sandy Hook verdict either, due to asset shielding. Does anyone actually pay these huge civil verdicts out of pocket? I think his much greater concern is losing a criminal case, and even then, Trump is Teflon and nothing sticks to him. And given his advanced age, he may die before paying anyway. Trump is smart enough to savvy enough to know what lines not to cross. Trump being precluded from running would also have to be weighed against the risk of civil unrest and a major retaliatory blowout turnout in 2024.
Since this case was so nakedly partisan, I think even a conviction won't persuade Trump supporters, and the reasonable undecided, that he really was the terrible crook as claimed. "New York real estate is corrupt?" Oh, I'm so shocked and astounded to learn that. "Trump is a vain blowhard?" Ditto. But also "we took this case for political reasons and to advance our careers, despite the fact that the alleged victims weren't even interested in suing, do you really believe this was a fair trial?" Ditto.
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He has assets in New York that can be seized. I don't expect this to result in a fire sale of Trump tower, but that's the direction things go if he doesn't find the cash himself.
Surely there are many appeals and other delays a wealthy defendant can file for before assets are seized and sold forcibly in this way.
That’s to say nothing of what Trump could do to hurt New York if he wins again, which would presumably result in some behind-the-scenes negotiation.
The various appeals and delays only work if the courts want them to work. If they want to expeditiously bring the case to a conclusion, they can lay the tracks for that.
Even the NYT says proceedings could easily take years, so it seems like it’ll be a while.
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Defendants in NY civil cases have to put more the judgement amount into escrow with the court or get a bond before they can appeal.
The Saudis gave Kushner $2bn to manage in the hope he’d still be in favor in a Trump II administration, there are surely unsanctioned parties willing to risk $400m for favor with the man himself.
Kushner wasn't running for office. Being in hock to the Saudis to the tune of $400 million while running for president isn't a good look. There's also the fact that, in the likely event he loses the appeal, the Saudis probably expect him to pay the money back.
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I am not sure it’s that easy to shield money. Russia couldn’t shield money from the long reach of dollar hegemony and U.S. financial regulator capacity. No bank can operate without being in good grace with Washington. On Alex Jones best I know he was actually bankrupt.
Criminal almost seems easier to get away with. Just need Desantis to tell a NY warrant to fuck off.
Russia and rich Russians have shielded a huge amount of money. Britain (a major hub for questionable and less questionable Russian money, also with sovereignty over the Cayman Islands etc) explicitly declined to freeze or seize assets of all but a handful of Russian dual citizens, and almost all super rich Russians are dual citizens of Cyprus, Portugal, Malta or elsewhere through investment schemes. Among the Russian rich, it’s really only a very small number of elites closely connected to Putin and his political and military operation who have been sanctioned. There were a ton of rich Russians in Aspen late last year, and of course the usual European resorts (Courchevel etc) were full of them. They just didn’t arrive on Russian passports.
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I am sure if anyone is good at protecting assets it would be Trump. The guy is an expert at this sort of stuff. unlike other notable large civil judgements, Trump actually has the ability to satisfy the entire judgement, so it will be interesting to see if he is forced to pay out. It is also possible it will be negotiated to a much lower amount and sealed, so we will have no way of knowing how much is actually paid.
I've done asset protection work and it's not as simple as having good lawyers. The only realistic way to protect assets is to retitle those assets in a trust created for your benefit. It seems simple enough, but the catch is that you can't have any control over the trust assets themselves, the trust has to be irrevocable, and, perhaps most importantly, the trust has to be created well before whatever adverse event it is you're worried about. For instance, Medicaid trusts have a mandatory 5 year lookback period, meaning that the assets aren't fully protected if you apply for Medicaid within 5 years of transferring the assets to the trust. In a non-routine case like this, I'd expect the court to do a more holistic analysis, looking at the timing of asset transfers, the amount of control Donald Trump had over the assets after the transfer (including control over the organizations to whom they were transferred), and transfers to family or other "insiders", the history of his making such transfers, to make a determination as to whether the transfers were ordinary parts of his normal business or done specifically to avoid the judgment.
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