9 months ago
NEW YORK — The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial issued him a $354.8 million penalty Friday, finding that for years Trump orchestrated massive business fraud by falsely inflating his net worth to obtain favorable rates from banks and insurers.
The verdict strikes at the heart of an aspect of Trump’s identity that he harnessed in his 2016 presidential run: his personal wealth and his success as a businessperson.
The penalty caps a three-month trial in a lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Tish James. It comes just weeks after a federal jury in a separate case ordered Trump to pay $83.3 million in damages to the writer E. Jean Carroll over defamatory statements he made while president in response to her rape accusation.
And combined with the $5 million penalty Trump was ordered to pay to Carroll in a separate trial last year, it means the front-runner in the Republican presidential primary now owes $443.1 million in judgments. (Trump is appealing the earlier Carroll verdict, and he has vowed to appeal the verdicts in both the more recent Carroll trial and the civil fraud trial.)
English (US)