VICE
Former President Donald Trump has suffered through plenty of painful courtroom defeats during his lengthy career as one of America’s most litigious businessmen.
This time looks different. He’s now officially overdue to receive a downright brutal judicial ruling in a case that threatens to dismember his business empire, drain his cash reserves and drive him out of New York State as a businessman forever.
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Aurthur Engoron blew through a self-imposed soft end-of-the-month deadline on Wednesday to deliver a judgment in the sweeping multi-million fraud lawsuit brought by the New York Attorney General Letitia James. Trump and his company have already been found liable, and are now just waiting to find out the size of the punishment. That decision could land at any moment, zapping Trump’s business like a thunderbolt when it does, in what could easily be the largest financial penalty of Trump’s life.
The New York Attorney General’s Office is seeking $370 million, along with a lifetime ban on Trump working in New York real estate or serving as an executive or director of a company based in the state. Judge Engoron declared Trump and his business liable for fraudulently overstating Trump’s wealth for financial gain in September. Now, the same judge bears sole responsibility for setting the penalty. A spokesperson for the court said Thursday that the ruling has been delayed until early to mid-February.
A $370 million fine would follow Trump’s $83 million defamation loss to writer E. Jean Carroll, in a lawsuit over Trump’s derisive denials of Carroll’s claim that Trump raped her in a New York department store bathroom in the 1990s.
