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A judge in New York has ruled that Trump and his sons inflated his net worth by providing false financial statements for a decade. This civil case brought by New York’s AG was about to go to trial on the facts but now the judge has decided there’s no doubt Trump is liable for fraud in his business dealings.
In his 35-page ruling, Judge Arthur Engoron said Trump continually lied on his financial statements and was able to get favorable loan terms and lower insurance premiums as a result. Trump’s legal arguments defending the statements are based in “a fantasy world, not the real world,” Engoron wrote.
The judge went on to say that the case was essentially a “documents case,” and “the documents here clearly contain fraudulent valuations that defendants used in business, satisfying [the attorney general’s] burden to establish liability as a matter of law against defendants. Defendants’ respond that: the documents do not say what they say; that there is no such thing as ‘objective; value; and that, essentially, the Court should not believe its own eyes.”
“The defenses Donald Trump attempts to articulate in his sworn deposition are wholly without basis in law or fact,” Engoron added.
Specifically, in his own defense Trump tried to claim that valuations offered to banks were not necessarily accurate and included a “worthless” clause, i.e. a disclaimer saying the valuations might not be accurate. The judge quotes from Trump’s deposition in which he said a couple times that the “worthless” made the valuations of no real value to anyone. The judge lets him have it.
…defendants’ reliance on these “worthless” disclaimers is worthless. The clause does not use the words “worthless” or “useless” or “ignore” or “disregard” or any similar words. It does not say, “the values herein are what I think the properties will be worth in ten or more years.” Indeed, the quoted language uses the word “current” no less than five times, and the word “future” zero times…
Thus, the “worthless clause” does not say what defendants say it says, does not rise to the level of an enforceable disclaimer, and cannot be used to insulate fraud as to facts peculiarly within defendants’ knowledge, even vis-a-vis sophisticated recipients.
After ruling that Trump submitted false values on these forms, the judge points to a bunch of specific examples like this one involving his New York apartment:
This Court takes judicial notice that the Trump Tower apartment in which Donald Trump resided for decades (the “Triplex”) is l 0,996 square feet.
