New York Judge Arthur Engoron has ordered Donald Trump pay more than $350 million in damages in the civil fraud lawsuit filed by state Attorney General Letitia James, court records show.
The former president, his adult sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., and other top executives at the Trump Organization have been found liable by the judge for filing falsified financial records in a decades-long fraud scheme, the ruling shows.
Eric and Donald Jr. were found liable for more than $4 million each, Engoron ruled. Former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg was found liable for $1 million.
James had asked the court for $370 million in damages and a permanent ban on doing business in New York. Engoron banned Trump temporarily for three years.
A court-appointed monitor issued a report last week showing the Trump Organization had cooperated with her independent oversight, but still risked putting out inaccurate financial statements because the company lacked a formal compliance department, issued statements riddled with errors, and lacked effective governance.
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Engoron had found the ex-president and his associates liable for fraud in a summary judgment before the trial began, meaning the trial had been mainly to decide damages.
James never asked for the Trump Organization to be dissolved and instead had urged the court to appoint an independent monitor to oversee the company's operations for five years before deciding whether to revoke his business certificates allowing him to operate in New York.
A New York jury ordered Trump to pay $83.3 million in penalties last month to author E. Jean Carroll in a separate defamation trial in which judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that he had defamed Carroll, and a jury in a previous trial found him liable for sexually abusing her decades ago and had defamed her after leaving office.
The second trial involved defamatory statements that Trump had made against Carroll while serving as president.
Trump also faces 91 criminal charges in four jurisdictions, as well as two U.S. Supreme Court appeals, as he seeks a second term in the White House.
