Failed former president Donald Trump is about to watch as his family-held company is “dismantled” for allegedly committing years of “persistent fraud,” and what’s about to happen will likely be devastating to the disgraced ex-president who has often bragged about being a great businessman.
New York Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron ruled last week that Attorney General Letitia James has indeed proven Trump and the Trump Organization have engaged in fraud for years and will now determine exactly what financial penalties to impose, including as much as $250 million in fines.
According to former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, Trump and his three oldest children, Don Jr., Ivanka, and Eric, can do little more than watch in horror.
“He claimed that his own personal residence in Trump Tower was 30,000 square feet – even the defense lawyers before this judge conceded that was wrong, and the judge is like, ‘How do you not know that it’s 10,000 feet?'” Weissmann asked Monday on MSNBC. “So, and then use that, as the court found, to defraud insurance companies and banks by saying he has more assets than he has, and that’s one of the reasons for facts like that which are just so plainly fictitious that the judge appointed a receiver. What that means is essentially the attorney general for New York is in change of protecting New Yorkers from what’s called persistent fraudsters, and that’s what the court found that Donald Trump and his companies and his sons are.”
Weissmann then explained what happens after Judge Engoron makes his next ruling:
“So the receiver gets to essentially make sure that he is not doing business in New York. You raised a really good question about whether that’s already a huge financial penalty and sanction, whether that also leads to banks and insurance companies basically pulling the plug or not financing anymore is going to be a big open question. There are already really significant consequences because this is where Donald Trump’s main businesses are. So a huge factor for him in terms of his companies, in terms of all sorts of business interests that he has here that he no longer will be in control of.”
