Former US President Donald Trump.
Photo: REUTERS
Donald Trump is no stranger to spending money on lawyers: even before becoming the 45th president of the United States, the businessman had to appear in court more than once. The reasons were very different: divorces, bankruptcies, disputes with contractors.
Several investigations were carried out against Trump during the period in which he was American head of state. But after losing the next election, the number of different cases brought against him and the corporations he owned increased markedly.
Trump himself considers this a “witch hunt” launched against him by his political opponents. But regardless of this, there are now six cases against him in courts of different jurisdictions, including four criminal ones.
And according to one of them, the court found Trump and his two sons guilty of fraud.
According to prosecutors, between 2011 and 2021, Trump deliberately inflated the size of his wealth when he applied for loans and insurance from various financial institutions. In exchange, they provided Trump companies with more favorable terms on loans and services.
The Trump family companies repaid all loans on time and did not handle fictitious insurance claims, but New York Attorney General Letitia James still considered this type of deception a crime. And the court agreed with her arguments.
The verdict establishes that for at least a decade, Trump and his sons, Eric and Donald Jr., falsified financial statements and claimed that Donald Trump’s assets were valued at $3.6 billion. In fact, Trump’s personal fortune was measured in much smaller amounts and, by some estimates, did not exceed $1 billion.
Trump’s lawyers argued in defense that the appraised value of, for example, the former president’s personal assets can be subjective, since the same real estate agents estimate the value of hectares of land and square meters of real estate differently. between an ordinary person and a celebrity.
In this case, the court has yet to determine the punishment: the prosecutor is demanding a gigantic fine of $250 million for the Trumps. James also intends to ban all adult Trumps from doing business in New York state. The latter could be a blow to the Trump Organization’s business empire, many of whose assets are located in New York.
The former president, as usual, said he was being persecuted by Democrats. He called the verdict scandalous and vowed to challenge it. Previously, his attorneys suggested that prosecutors settle the case through a plea deal, but Letitia James rejected that offer.
