New York Attorney General Letitia James is now seeking $370 million in penalties in her civil fraud case against former President Donald Trump, up from the $250 million she originally estimated when she first filed her lawsuit in September 2022, according to new court filings ahead of next week’s closing arguments in the case.
The damages would include prejudgment interest, the filing said, and James is also seeking to bar Trump from doing real estate business in New York.
The attorney general alleged that Trump and his co-defendants “reaped hundreds of millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains” resulting from alleged schemes to fraudulently misstate the value of Trump and his businesses’ assets.
James cited evidence that has emerged throughout the case as the basis of the new calculation, breaking down the damages into three categories: money Trump earned from interest rate savings due to misstating his assets, profit realized from two deals that James alleges were obtained fraudulently and “bonuses” paid to Trump Organization employees who participated in the scheme.
The two deals include $139 million in profit from the sale of the Old Post Office in Washington and $60 million in profit from the sale of the Ferry Point golf course in New York City.
In filings of their own, Trump’s attorneys rejected the allegations, maintaining arguments that the allegations are beyond the statute of limitations and that the transactions had no “real world impact.”
In 2022, James sued Trump, his business associates—including his sons—and the Trump Organization, alleging they fraudulently misstated the value of assets to financial institutions in order to boost Trump’s net worth and gain more favorable business deals. Manhattan-based Judge Arthur Engoron has already ruled that Trump and his company committed fraud by overstating the value of assets but must rule on other elements of the attorney general’s case, with closing arguments set for Jan. 11.
James additionally seeks to bar Trump’s sons, Donald Trump, Jr. and Eric Trump, from participating in the New York real estate business for five years.
