It has been found that the former president lied about the value of his homes and businesses.
Justice Arthur Engoron said on Tuesday that a civil court in New York State found that former US President Donald Trump and his family business lied about his net worth.
Last September, State Attorney General Letitia James sued Trump and the Trump Organization, saying that Trump had lied for ten years about how much money he had. The judge decided that the reality TV star had lied about the value of his assets by between $2.23 billion and $3.6 billion to get better terms on bank loans, insurance, and other ways to earn money.
The court found that Trump inflated the value of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, his Trump Tower penthouse, and several golf fields and office buildings. Justice Engoron agreed with James that the value of a few properties had been inflated, and he said that the Republican candidate for president’s defence was “wholly without basis in law or fact.”
On Monday, a hearing will start to sort out all of the different claims in the lawsuit.
Trump is also facing dozens of criminal charges related to his alleged role in the Capitol riot on January 6, his likely payment of hush money to a porn star almost a decade ago, and his alleged keeping of top-secret government documents after leaving the White House. He has called the rising number of cases against him a “political witch hunt”. He has used the first-ever federal indictments against a former US president to raise money for his campaign for president in 2024.
James said the whole Trump family was guilty of “staggering fraud” in her $250 million case. She wants to stop the Trumps and their company from doing business in New York. In addition to Trump, three of his adult children and two Trump Organization employees, Allan Weisselberg and Jeff McConney, are defendants in the lawsuit.
The former president has denied wrongdoing in the case, saying that “not only was no bank harmed” by his overly optimistic estimates of his assets, but “they profited handsomely to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in interest and fees – and never once took issue with any of the loans in question.”
