The sweeping punishment handed down Friday by a New York judge against Donald Trump and his family business is a major blow to the former president in his longtime home market.
The ruling includes about $355 million in fines, as well as a three-year ban on Trump serving as a corporate executive and his ability to seek loans from New York banks.
The decision maintains the independent oversight that has frustrated the Trump family and adds an independent chief compliance officer.
“The business in many ways is still in the family, but it’s out of the family’s control,” said Will Thomas, a professor of business law at the University of Michigan.
Although Trump is expected to appeal the ruling, legal experts see no viable path to avoiding the $355 million in penalties, which are essentially due immediately.
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Instead of paying the full amount, Trump could get a bond. But raising a bond requires a down payment typically of about 10 percent, or $35 million, which Trump would not get back even in a successful appeal, said Brian Quinn, a professor at Boston College Law School.
While Trump is known for pushing legal challenges to their limits — or beyond them — government authorities in New York state have leverage over the company.
The company’s properties in the state include Trump Tower, 40 Wall Street and the Trump Park Avenue Hotel, which is known in part as the place where Bob Dylan first met the Beatles.
Those assets could be seized if Trump defaults on the deal, Thomas said.
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The estimated value of Trump’s New York properties is about $690 million, according to Forbes.
Forbes estimates the former president’s fortune at $2.6 billion, an amount that includes $870 million in golf clubs and resorts, $190 million in real estate outside of York City and $640 million in “cash and personal assets ».
New York Attorney General Letitia James highlighted the recklessness with which Trump and his sons operate the business, saying Friday that Trump is “finally facing accountability for his lies, deception and egregious fraud.”
The former president remains decidedly unpopular in his home state as he seeks a third bid for the White House after decisively losing New York state in both 2016 and 2020.
Trump is best liked in Florida, where his assets include the Mar-a-Lago club, the Trump National Doral resort in Miami and three homes.
But even if he wanted to move Trump’s headquarters to Florida, he would have to be qualified to do business in New York, Quinn said.
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Further, Trump’s three-year ban on serving as an officer — and the two-year ban on sons Eric and Donald Jr. — mean they won’t be able to make acquisitions, take out loans or refinance.
“There’s nothing that would stop him from owning, owning stock or owning property,” Quinn said, adding, “it just becomes very difficult to do business.”
Thomas said relocating a business to a new state becomes much more difficult when there is a legal judgment against it in one jurisdiction.
Next term, the court will determine exactly how the business works with the independent monitor, not the Trumps, Thomas said.
“New York real estate is the most under the court’s thumb,” Thomas said. “But the rest of the Trump Organization will find it difficult to escape the constraints of this crisis.”
Source: AFP