Looks like Letitia James just upped the ante against Donald Trump
When New York Attorney General Letitia James announced her findings that Donald Trump and the Trump Organization had committed systematic financial fraud, she stated that she was seeking at least $250 million in damages. The key words there were “at least.”
As the trial has gone on, we’ve all been waiting to see if James would increase that number. Now it appears she has. Court reporter Frank G. Runyeon of Law360 has tallied up the specific dollar amounts that James has cited so far in the trial, and he now believes that James has increased her minimum damages to at least $367 million.
Of course it’s not simply a matter of what Letitia James thinks the damages should be. Judge Arthur Engoron has already summarily ruled that Donald Trump is in fact liable in key aspects of the case. It’ll be up to him to decide the size of the damages that should be doled out. He can decide that the financial punishment should be even larger than the dollar amount that Trump defrauded people out of. But for now it looks like James is indeed looking to get Engoron to go with a lot more than just $250 million.
The kicker is even the baseline $250 million would likely be sufficient to bankrupt Donald Trump (this time for real). Even if he were to begin selling off assets to try to preemptively cover a $250 million fine, he appears to be upside down on most of them. With a financial house of cards like the one that Trump built, it’s likely to collapse completely if you pull out $250 million worth of cards. It’s even more likely to collapse if you pull out $367 million, or whatever the damages end up being.
