{"id":200791,"date":"2025-09-04T23:27:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T23:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/200791\/"},"modified":"2025-09-04T23:27:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T23:27:09","slug":"ag-letitia-james-asks-ny-court-to-reinstate-trumps-civil-fraud-penalty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/200791\/","title":{"rendered":"AG Letitia James asks NY court to reinstate Trump\u2019s civil fraud penalty"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York Attorney General Letitia James asked the state\u2019s highest court Thursday to reinstate President Trump\u2019s half-billion-dollar civil fraud penalty, appealing a bombshell ruling<\/a> that cut the whopping fine to $0.<\/p>\n

James\u2019 office wants the New York State Court of Appeals to reverse the mid-level Appellate Division\u2019s decision last month that the $464 million judgment<\/a> \u2014 which grew to more than $500 million with interest \u2014 was an \u201cexcessive\u201d fine barred by the US Constitution.<\/p>\n

The notice of appeal comes a week after Trump filed his own challenge of the mid-level court\u2019s ruling, which upheld a finding that the 79-year-old real estate tycoon-turned president committed fraud by exaggerating his net worth in financial records sent to banks and insurers.<\/p>\n

New York Attorney General Letitia James speaks during a news conference on Sept. 21, 2022, in New York. AP<\/p>\n

Despite wiping out the staggering fine, the appeals panel also kept in place other restrictions on Trump\u2019s business, including a ban on Trump and his two eldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, from running a company in New York for several years.<\/p>\n

It was unclear Thursday when the Empire State\u2019s highest court, which is housed in Albany, would hear arguments in the closely watched case.<\/p>\n

The appeal is the latest salvo in a long-running case in which James, a Democrat, accused Trump and others of carrying out a \u201cstaggering fraud\u201d by inflating the value of his assets \u2014 including his golf courses, Manhattan penthouse and Mar-A-Lago estate \u2014 by billions of dollars over a decade to get better loan and insurance terms.<\/p>\n

The Republican commander in chief has maintained his innocence and claimed that the case was politically motivated, pointing out that James promised to investigate Trump while campaigning for office.<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump makes an announcement in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on September 2, 2025. AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Donald Trump\u2019s Mar-a-Lago estate is seen on July 28, 2023, in Palm Beach, Florida. Getty Images<\/p>\n

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Evidence from the 11-week trial revealed that Trump\u2019s business falsely claimed on financial files that his Trump Tower triplex was 30,000 square feet \u2014 rather than its true size of 11,000 square feet. <\/p>\n

Trump also valued Mar-a-Lago at $517 million, despite his own tax broker admitting that the palatial estate had a true \u201cmarket value\u201d of far less because it was considered a \u201cprivate club\u201d and not a residence, a witness revealed.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s lawyers shot back that the case had no \u201cvictims\u201d and that \u201csophisticated\u201d companies like Deutsche Bank did their own research before entering into the deals and were all paid back in full.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron sided with James\u2019 office at the end of the non-jury trial, but the appeals court said Engoron had gone too far by ordering Trump to pay the massive penalty.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile harm certainly occurred, it was not the cataclysmic harm that can justify a nearly half-billion-dollar award,\u201d two judges on the panel wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York Attorney General Letitia James asked the state\u2019s highest court Thursday to reinstate President Trump\u2019s half-billion-dollar civil…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":200792,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,49772,356,69,24980,5248,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,80,67,586,132,5230,68,1154,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-200791","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-attorney-general","10":"tag-courts","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-letitia-james","13":"tag-metro","14":"tag-new-york","15":"tag-new-york-city","16":"tag-newyork","17":"tag-newyorkcity","18":"tag-ny","19":"tag-nyc","20":"tag-politics","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-united-states-of-america","23":"tag-unitedstates","24":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","25":"tag-us","26":"tag-us-news","27":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115148622642078347","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}