New York AG asks appeals court to uphold Trump's $454M fraud judgment

New York Attorney General Letitia James asked a state appeals court Wednesday to uphold a lower court's determination that former President Donald Trump, his adult sons and his company are liable for a fraudulent scheme that inflated Trump's net worth by as much as $2.2 billion, arguing the judge "properly ordered defendants to disgorge only the ill-gotten profits of their wrongdoing."

Trump had asked the New York Appellate Division's First Department to reverse February's ruling from Judge Arthur Engoron that ordered Trump to pay $454 million for frauds that Engoron said "leap off the page and shock the conscience."

The attorney general's office said the intermediate appellate court should reject Trump's appeal because Engoron correctly decided that Trump and his codefendants "used a variety of deceptive strategies to vastly misrepresent the values of Mr. Trump's assets."

Oral arguments in Trump's appeal are scheduled for Sept. 26.

In an 11-week civil trial that concluded in February, Judge Engoron found that Trump inflated his net worth, including by valuing his own apartment as if it was triple its actual size and by valuing his Mar-a-Lago estate as if deed restrictions did not exist. Trump and his codefendants then used his false and misleading financial statements to do business more than two dozen times between 2014 and 2021, Engoron found.

"On appeal, defendants tellingly ignore almost all their deceptions," assistant solicitor general Daniel Magy wrote in Wednesday's filing.

Defense attorneys argued the attorney general misapplied the law, known as New York Executive Law 63(12), and that Trump's alleged business fraud had no clear victims or monetary losses.

"Defendants are wrong on the law," Magy wrote in Wednesday's filing, arguing that the state was not required to prove that victims relied on the Trump's financial statements or that they lost money.

"Indeed, one of § 63(12)'s core remedial purposes is to protect the honesty and integrity of commercial marketplaces in New York by stopping fraudulent and illegal practices before they cause financial losses to market participants or broader harms to the public," Magy wrote.