On Tuesday, New York State Attorney General Letitia James stated that she is prepared to seize Donald Trump’s assets, including his skyscrapers if he cannot find the cash to pay off a $355 million fine from his fraud trial.
“If he does not have funds to pay off the judgment, then we will seek judgment enforcement mechanisms in court, and we will ask the judge to seize his assets,” James told ABC News.
Last week, a New York judge ordered Trump, the former Republican president and frontrunner for his party’s White House nomination, to pay the fine. The ruling came after finding that he committed repeated and persistent fraud.
Trump overstated his net worth by as much as $3.6 billion a year. This was done to obtain better loan terms. Trump denies all wrongdoing and is appealing the fine. He has accused James, an elected Democrat, of bias. Trump’s appeal of the judgment may focus on his contention that there were no actual victims of the conduct in the case.
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But James told ABC that she is confident of the strength of her case. She added that “financial frauds are not victimless crimes.” “He engaged in this massive amount of fraud,” she said. “It wasn’t just a simple mistake, a slight oversight. The variations are wildly exaggerated, and the extent of the fraud was staggering.”
In related news, Six days after its launch, a GoFundMe set up to pay for Donald Trump’s civil fraud fine has nearly reached $1 million.
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On Friday, Elena Cardone created the GoFundMe page titled “Stand with Trump; Fund the $355M Unjust Judgment.” This followed Judge Arthur Engoron’s ruling the same day that Trump would have to pay roughly $355 million in penalties for fraud.
As of Thursday afternoon, it has received $939,000 in donations, just over $60,000 short of $1 million. The New York court determined that Trump and top executives at The Trump Organization committed fraud.
They did this by inflating the value of his assets to obtain more favorable terms from lenders and insurers. New York Attorney General Letitia James, who brought the lawsuit, stated that with pre-judgment interest, the penalty totals over $450 million. This amount “which will continue to increase every single day” until the judgment is paid.
Trump’s lawyers announced they would appeal the judgment. However, despite raising significant funds, Scott Lucas, a professor in international politics at University College Dublin, described the GoFundMe as “more symbolic than substantive” in an interview with Newsweek.
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He added: “Trump’s penalty for fraud in the civil case is, with interest included, going to run to more than $450 million, so $1 million is very much a drop in the punishment bucket in terms of what he’s facing and of course that’s on top of the $83.3 million that has been awarded to E. Jean Carroll over his sexual assault and defamation of her.”
“What the significance of the GoFundMe is more that the Trump camp whipping this up as ‘oh look, look, look, look at all these people that support our president in terms of this unjust persecution by the justice system and the deep state’ and that’s how it will be spun.”
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