Trump's Trials - Trump ordered to pay nearly $355 million in civil fraud case

Episode Date: February 16, 2024

For this episode of Trump's Trials, NPR's Juana Summers speaks NPR's Andrea Bernstein.A New York judge has ordered former President Donald Trump and his companies to pay nearly $355 million in penalties for inflating the value of his properties and other assets. The verdict also banned Trump from operating his New York business and applying for loans in the state for three years. This follows a sometimes contentious three-month trial that was decided by a judge and not a jury.Topics include:- Civil fraud verdict - Money owed - Possible Trump appeal Follow the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify for new episodes each Saturday.Sign up for sponsor-free episodes and support NPR's political journalism at plus.npr.org/trumpstrials.Email the show at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

It's Trump's Trials from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow. We love Trump! This is a persecution. He actually just stormed out of the courtroom. Innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. We are here with an episode because there's some breaking news in one of former President Trump's cases. You're about to hear a story that just aired on NPR today, and then we'll be back to talk more about it in our usual

episode on Saturday. Thanks for listening. function declines, which may impact changes in energy and strength. Solgar Cellular Nutrition is a holistic collection of cellular nutrients formulated to help fight cellular decline and promote cell health. Learn more at cellularnutrition.solgar.com. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. You're listening to Trump's Trials. I'm Scott Detrow. And now here's Juana Summers. The New York Attorney General Letitia James took a victory lap tonight after a New York judge ruled in her favor. Donald Trump may have authored the art of the deal, but he perfected the art of the steal. After a three-month trial, Judge Arthur Ngoran ordered former President

Donald Trump, his sons, and his companies to pay well over $350 million plus interest to the state of New York. Trump called that decision a sham. NPR's Andrea Bernstein has been covering this case and joins us now. Hey, Juana. I mean, let's just start with the money here. How did the judge arrive at that number? So basically, New York State Supreme Court Judge Arthur Ngoran rejected every single defense Trump and his team presented in months of testimony. The judge said the law only requires that defendants intended to defraud, not that there were victims, not that anyone relied on his false statements. The judge said it didn't hold water, that it was Trump's accountant's fault. Indeed, the judge found almost all of the Trump witnesses not to be credible,

and that when Donald Trump testified, his, quote, refusal to answer the questions directly, or in some cases at all, severely compromised his credibility. The judge found New York Attorney General Letitia James proved her case that Trump lied over and over for decades about everything from the size of his apartment, it was one-third as large as he claimed, to his ability to sell Mar-a-Lago as a private residence. He cannot. One of the major witnesses who testified is Michael Cohen, and as many may remember, he pleaded guilty to lying. So given that fact, how did the judge evaluate his testimony? During the trial, Cohen described how Trump indicated to him he wanted him to, quote, reverse engineer values to get them to what Trump wanted them to be. Cohen was really the only former employee who said it in exactly this way,

and what Judge Ngorun, describing Cohen's testimony, described as Trump's mob voice. The defense really leaned into the fact that Cohen has pleaded guilty to lying to Congress and to banks and accused Cohen of actually perjuring himself in this trial. But Judge N'Goran rejected that, writing, quote, a less forgiving fact finder might have concluded differently, might not have believed a single word of a convicted perjurer. This fact finder does not believe that pleading guilty to perjury means you can never tell the truth. Michael Cohen told the truth. Interesting.

Okay, the attorney general asked for $340 million. So help us with the math here. How did the judge get to $355 million? So to be clear, this is not a fine. New York law requires you to give back to the state whatever ill-gotten gains you made by committing persistent fraud. $170 million is the cash saved by lying to Deutsche Bank in loan applications. $127 million is for the extra profit he made by selling the lease for the Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C. And $60 million is for extra money that he got for selling a New York golf course that he used this money to undergird.

The judge called the Trumps' lack of remorse for all this, quote, bordering on the pathological. And that does not include interest, which the attorney general says could bring the total actually to over $450 million. Did Trump win anything here? Yep. The judge backed off an earlier decision to cancel Trump's business licenses and instead banned Trump from running his business and seeking loans from New York banks for three years

because the judge said there is now sufficient oversight in place. Trump's lawyer, Alina Haba, issued a statement saying, This verdict is a manifest injustice, plain and simple. It is the culmination of a multi-year politically fueled witch hunt that was designed to take down Donald Trump. Haba says they will appeal this verdict and nothing will be final until it goes to New York's highest court, the Court of Appeals. NPR's Andrea Bernstein, thank you. Thank you. Thanks for listening to Trump's Trials from NPR. Keep an eye out for more episodes like this whenever big news happens. And we'll be back later this week

with our regular show on Saturday. I'm Scott Detrow. Thank you. SAP Concur solutions. You'll be ready to take on whatever the market throws at you next. Learn more at Concur.com. This election season, you can expect to hear a lot of news, some of it meaningful, much of it not. Give the Up First podcast 15 minutes, sometimes a little less, and we'll help you sort it out, what's going on around the world and at home. Three stories, 15 minutes, Up first every day. Listen every morning wherever you get your podcasts. In this country, some truths aren't self-evident.

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