New York Attorney General Letitia James has argued in her civil lawsuit against Donald J. Trump that the former president inflated the value of his properties by as much as $2.2 billion and fraudulently secured favorable terms on loans and insurance deals.
A New York judge, Arthur F. Engoron, ruled on Tuesday that Trump, his adults sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump, Jr., among others in the Trump Organization, repeatedly committed fraud by inflating the value of his assets for years.
Engoron cited Trump inflating the value of his triplex apartment at Trump Tower by three times its size (it’s approximately 11,000 sq. ft. not 30,000 sq. ft), resulting in an overvaluation of between $114 million to $207 million. Engoron wrote: “A discrepancy of this order of magnitude, by a real estate developer sizing up his own living space of decades, can only be considered fraud.”
James is seeking a penalty of about $250 million in a trial to determine the size of the penalty — which is scheduled to begin as early as Monday, October 2.
A lawyer for Trump, Christopher M. Kise, indicated that he would likely appeal the decision.
Kise said in his statement: “The court disregarded the viewpoint of those actually involved in the loan transactions who testified there was nothing misleading, there was no fraud, and the transactions were all highly profitable.” He added that there was “zero evidence of any default, breach, late payment or any complaint of harm.”
In his statement, Engoron likened the Trumps’ legal defense of his fraudulent financial statements to a line in the 1933 black comedy Marx Brothers movie Duck Soup: “Well, who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”
In Duck Soup, Groucho Marx portrays the newly installed president of the mythical country of Freedonia. Zeppo is his secretary, while Chico and Harpo are spies for the neighboring country of Sylvania. Relations between the two countries deteriorate and at the end (after a courtroom trial) they go to war.
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