The New York attorney general on Friday asked the judge who had overseen the civil fraud trial of Donald J. Trump to penalize the former president about $370 million, saying the trial had demonstrated that he had gained that amount through unlawful conduct, Report informs, citing The New York Times.
The sum was well over the $250 million that the attorney general, Letitia James, had estimated in the fall of 2022, when she sued Mr. Trump, accusing him of inflating his net worth to obtain favorable treatment from banks and insurers.
The trial began in October and proceedings ended last month, but Mr. Trump’s fate is not yet settled. The attorney general’s penalty request came in a post-trial brief filed on Friday. Mr. Trump’s lawyers, in one of their own filings, wrote that “the attorney general has woefully failed to prove her case and is not entitled to any of the relief,” including any financial penalty.
In a statement, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, Christopher M. Kise, called the amount “unconscionable, unsupported by the evidence, untethered from reality and unconstitutionally excessive.”
A spokeswoman for the Trump Organization said that “every single member of the New York business community, no matter the sector, should be gravely concerned with this gross overreach and brazen attempt by the attorney general to exert limitless power where no private or public harm has ever been established.”