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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.
Do you have any personal opinions about whether whether this was a fair ruling, Ashlael? I have little knowledge about law and can't even begin to determine how fair this case was for myself. The sources I would normally use to determine an opinion, like a synthesis of Wikipedia, liberal subreddits, conservative subreddits, and themotte comments, are all varying so much from each other and not really directly addressing each other's points that I can't come to a conclusion. But I do generally greatly respect your analysis as insightful and not particularly biased.
I think the ruling itself is fair. The underlying law is a bit iffy.
Basically, it's not strictly accurate to describe the amount that Trump is paying as a "fine". The underlying activity - while I agree it is clearly and indisputably fraudulent - is not particularly heinous. Ok, he exaggerated the value of his assets, I don't think anyone finds that particularly shocking or surprising. The judge describes it as "a venial, not mortal sin". The reason why he's being made to pay such a big amount is because it's primarily disgorgement. That is, he's being stripped of the money that he made through his unlawful activity.
In this case, that means a) the difference between the interest he paid given the favourable terms he was able to procure and the interest he would have paid without those favourable terms, and b) the profit he made on the business deals that were financed by these loans. Trump happens to have borrowed a lot and made a lot of money.
As far as I understand it, that is how this law works and the judge is applying it fairly. I'm not exactly sure though how I feel about a law that can have such wild differences in penalty depending on factors that have nothing to do with the severity of the unlawful activity itself. For example, if Trump's real estate investments had tanked he would be on the hook for far less - even though his behaviour would be equally bad and the consequences of it would be worse (the harm that Trump caused is deceiving the banks into accepting higher risk than they priced in which is bad in principle but obviously more damaging in a reality when the gamble doesn't pay off). I accept that sometimes laws have differing penalties based on the outcome and regardless of intent, but it's probably not great to have a law that functionally penalises someone more when their actions hurt people less.
At the end of the day though, that's how New York chose to write its law and it's being implemented as intended. It was entirely in Trump's power to avoid this outcome by simply not lying. So as far as I'm concerned, he fucked around and found out. Tough bikkies.
EDIT: On further review it appears that the law doesn't actually require disgorgement and that the judge has more latitude than I thought in terms of determining the appropriate relief. That shifts me away from thinking the law is poorly drafted and towards thinking that the Judge applied a pretty stiff penalty relative to the seriousness of the conduct.
The other concern I've seen and that I share is that it's just him being prosecuted for this. That this sort of fraud is very common and normally isn't enforced. It'd be like if they also prosecuted him for adultery, which is Class B misdemeanor in New York.
I'm not that sympathetic to him, I agree with your sentiment that he fucked around and found out, but I am pretty concerned about this setting a bad precedent of trumping up charges against political opponents.
Also, do you have a substack or twitter or anything with more writing I could follow?
The law in question has been used many times against other people and businesses, including Exxon Mobil, Juul, and Martin Shkreli. It's not as if they dug up some long dormant statute.
It also doesn't perturb me that the unlawful conduct in this case is common. The law is designed for addressing "repeated" and "persistent" fraudulent activity - and while it's possible for a type of fraud to be "persistent and repeated" without it being "common", you'd have to expect there to be a good amount of overlap. In other words, it seems to me that this statute is designed to be used for addressing exactly these types of crimes that people have gotten used to thinking they can get away with.
Which just leaves us with the fact that Trump is a politician. Personally I'm of the view that it's entirely right and appropriate for politicians to come under unusually harsh scrutiny, as long as the laws are applied appropriately. They are unusually powerful people, so it's in the public interest that they also be unusually law-abiding. So the horror scenario that some people hold up, that Joe Biden or other Democrats might be subjected to retributive criminal investigations, seems to me like a win-win. I'm very happy for the Trumps and the Menendezes and the Santoses all to get shipped off to prison and if sufficient evidence can be found to lock up the Bidens and the Clintons and the McConnells along with them, all the better.
No Substack or Twitter I'm afraid - my particular flavour of obnoxious ranting is a Motte exclusive.
Thanks for the response. Also, I want to say it feels downright criminal you're not getting more upvotes, and often even downvotes, for explanations of the case. The most clear cut case of themotte's rightwing bias I've seen in a long time. Just ridiculous that I'd have 10 upvotes and you'd have 0 when my comment was just trying to poke a couple holes in your informative analysis.
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Thats why I'm here, comments or links to well digested think pieces. I'd love to see the steelman of both sides. Ditto the Carroll case. Yet as someone who loathes Trump, I'm skeptical of both decisions after some light perusing of partisan hacks.
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