Though former President Donald Trump’s criminal prosecutions have gotten most of the attention — and rightly so, given their unprecedented effect on an election campaign — it’s the civil investigation of the former president, his associates (including children) and his companies that may have longer-lasting effects.
Indeed, New York’s status as America’s business capital is tottering after a suspect, and excessive, judgment against the Trump Organization.
Back in September last year, after a four-year investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia James into financial fraud allegations that boiled down to presenting inflated property values to potential lenders, presiding Judge Arthur Engoron ordered the termination of the defendants’ business licenses and the dissolution of various limited liability companies.
In February, Engoron concluded that the defendants “failed to accept responsibility or to impose internal controls to prevent future recurrences” of having “submitted blatantly false financial data” to “borrow more and at lower rates” and assessed Trump and his companies $354 million of disgorgement of ill-gotten gains (plus interest).
Continue reading the entire piece here at the New York Post
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Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of Constitutional Studies at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here. Tim Rosenberger is a legal fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
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