New York AG demands $370 million from Trump after civil fraud lawsuit

New York’s attorney general on Friday asked the judge who oversaw the civil fraud trial of Donald J. Trump to award the former president a penalty of about $370 million, saying the trial had shown that he owed that amount had earned through unlawful conduct.

The amount was well above the $250 million that Attorney General Letitia James had estimated in the fall of 2022, when she sued Mr. Trump, accusing him of inflating his assets to get favorable treatment from banks and insurers .

The trial began in October and ended last month, but Mr Trump’s fate has not yet been decided. The attorney general’s sentencing request came in a post-trial letter on Friday. Mr. Trump’s lawyers wrote in one of their own filings that “the Attorney General has failed miserably to prove her case and is not entitled to any relief,” including any financial penalty.

A lawyer for Mr. Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the $370 million figure.

Next week, the attorneys will make closing arguments before the judge, Arthur F. Engoron. The nature of Ms James’ trial meant there was no jury; Judge Engoron has said he will try to rule on the case by the end of this month.

In addition to the stiff financial penalty, Ms. James, a Democrat, is asking that Mr. Trump, a Republican, be barred from participating in New York’s real estate industry and from running any business in the state.

Judge Engoron, also a Democrat, has been persuaded by Ms. James’ arguments in the past. Before the trial began, he ruled in her favor and found that Mr. Trump had committed fraud by inflating the value of his assets, and therefore his wealth. Most of the trial focused on whether the former president’s conduct violated other New York laws and the possible consequences of his misdeeds.

The trial was a contentious affair, as lawyers for Ms. James and Mr. Trump clashed over issues large and small, and the former president regularly attended the proceedings and used the hallway outside the courtroom as a campaign stop. There he railed against the attorney general, the judge and the judge’s chief clerk, whom he attacked as politically biased, prompting Judge Engoron to issue a silence order banning Mr. Trump from commenting on court staff.

The former president’s lawyers argued that the proceedings stemmed from Ms. James’ political bias, and they repeatedly tried to derail the trial, repeatedly calling for a favorable verdict based on what they said was a lack of sufficient evidence used to be. Judge Engoron was not convinced. On December 18, five days after the proceedings ended, the judge dismissed the claims and appeared to dismiss Mr. Trump’s case.

He wrote that some of the lawyers’ arguments “personified frivolity,” contradicted the testimony of their financial experts, and again contradicted Trump’s oft-made argument that the valuation of the assets in question was subjective.

“Let no one be fooled,” Judge Engoron wrote. “Valuations, as explained ad nauseam in this study, can be based on different criteria that are analyzed in different ways. But a lie is still a lie.”