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Donald Trump, two of his sons, and his business associates should pay nearly $370 million in “ill-gotten gains” they earned by submitting fraudulent financial statements to banks and insurers, New York Attorney General Letitia James argued on Friday.
The attorney general also asked for an order permanently barring the former president and his ex-business associates Allen Weisselberg and Jeffrey McConney from ever serving as an officer or director of a New York corporation. She claims, and a judge found in September, that Trump fraudulently inflated his assets, often by billions of dollars a year, for roughly a decade.
Before the trial began, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron ordered the dissolution of Trump’s New York business empire, a decree informally known as the corporate death penalty.
James wants a host of additional penalties to pile onto that pre-trial ruling, and her legal brief represents the first time her office has laid all of their requested penalties.
“Lifetime injunctions barring Trump, Weisselberg and McConney from
participating in the real estate industry in New York State or from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation or other legal entity are necessary and appropriate,” the attorney general’s assistant Kevin Wallace wrote. “Trump, Weisselberg and McConney worked together for years to inflate Trump’s net worth while concealing the fraud from counterparties.”
The attorney general requested several other proposed injunctions, including ones barring the “creation of further false financial entries and financial records,” mandating the creation of “an appropriate set of internal controls,” and banning them from “applying for loans from any financial institution.”
The state sought lesser penalties for two of Trump’s adult children.
“For Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, the current co-leaders of the company, a five-year bar on participating in the real estate industry in New York State or serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation or other legal entity is necessary and appropriate,” the state’s proposed findings of law and conclusions of fact state. “The evidence establishes that Eric Trump was aware of and participated in the fraudulent scheme at least as early as 2012.”
Spanning 102 pages, the brief summarizes evidence compiled over the course of roughly 11 weeks and 44 days of courtroom sessions. Trump and three of his adult children testified during that high-profile trial, as did his former Trump Organization lieutenants Weisselberg and McConney. On Dec. 13, 2023, proceedings adjourned on a cliffhanger, giving attorneys for Trump and the state the holiday recess to review the evidence and testimony of dozens of witnesses in order to prepare written and oral arguments.
In the view of the attorney general, that evidence is “conclusive.”
Former US President Donald Trump speaks while the court takes a lunch recess during the first day of his civil fraud trial at New York State Supreme Court on October 02, 2023 in New York City.Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
“Here, there is conclusive evidence of numerous overt acts by Weisselberg, McConney, Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., and Eric Trump in furtherance of the
conspiracy to falsify business records and the conspiracy to issue false financial statements,” the brief states.
The topline financial penalty requested by the attorney general adds up three other figures. The first derives from testimony from the state’s lead financial expert Michiel McCarty, who estimated in November that lenders like Deutsche Bank lost roughly $168 million on interest they could have charged if they had an accurate portrait of Trump’s net worth.
According to the attorney general, Trump wrongly made roughly $139 million off a deal to transform the government-owned Old Post Office to the former president’s now-shuttered hotel in Washington, D.C. The Trump Organization also made roughly $60 million from the sale of a golf course in Ferry Point in The Bronx, a property that the attorney general also alleges the former president fraudulently acquired. The rest comes from $2.5 million in bonuses to Weisselberg and McConney.
In a separate brief, Trump’s attorneys Michael Madiao and Christopher Kise reiterated the former president’s longtime position that no fraud occurred.
“Errors or misstatements happen all the time in accounting, if there are no indicia of fraud such as concealment, forgery, or deceit, then there is no basis to determine that these [statements of financial condition] are fraudulent, and any misstatements are just accidental errors,” the defense brief states.
Trump has long argued that no bank or insurance company accused him of defrauding them. He says that he never defaulted on any of the loans at issue, and everybody profited from the deals.
On at least one of the seven counts of the lawsuit, that argument was not a defense because the state did not have to prove Trump’s intent to show a violation of the statute. The attorney general also did not have to show that the banks or insurers would have acted differently if they had an accurate portrait of Trump’s finances.
Under the remaining six counts, the state must vault both of those hurdles, demonstrating what is known legally as intent and materiality.
Trump and the attorney general’s lawyers will return to court for closing arguments on Jan. 11, 2024.
Read the state’s brief below:
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This article was originally published by a themessenger.com . Read the Original article here. .