Judge Engoron vacated his September order canceling the defendants’ business certificates, instead ordering an independent monitor to oversee the Trump Organization for at least three years.

He also ordered an Independent Director of Compliance be installed at the company.

Judge Engoron, in his decision, excoriated the Trumps and their co-defendants for their "complete lack of contrition and remorse" that he said "borders on pathological."

"They are accused only of inflating asset values to make more money. The documents prove this over and over again. This is a venial sin, not a mortal sin."

"Defendants did not commit murder or arson," the judge wrote. "They did not rob a bank at gunpoint. Donald Trump is not Bernard Madoff. Yet, defendants are incapable of admitting the error of their ways. Instead, they adopt a 'See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil' posture that the evidence belies."

Former President Donald Trump must pay $354 million for fraudulent business practices, Judge Arthur Engoron has ruled.

Trump's sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have been fined $4 million apiece, and former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg has been fined $1 million.

The decision bars Trump barred from serving as an officer of a New York company for three years, and bars his sons for two years apiece.

Regarding the dissolution of Trump's companies, the decision says, "This Court hereby modifies its September 26, 2023, Decision and Order solely to the extent of removing the language ordering the LLCs cancellation en masse. The restructuring and potential dissolution of any LLCs shall be subject to individual review by the Court appointed Independent Director of Compliance in consultation with Judge Jones."

In his decision, Engoron wrote that "Defendants' refusal to admit error -- indeed, to continue it, according to the Independent Monitor -- constrains this Court to conclude that they will engage in it going forward unless judicially restrained."

"Overall, Donald Trump rarely responded to the questions asked, and he frequently interjected long, irrelevant speeches on issues far beyond the scope of the trial," the judge wrote. "His refusal to answer the questions directly, or in some cases, at all, severely compromised his credibility."

"The accountants created these 'compilations' based on data submitted by the Trump entities," the decision said. "In order to borrow more and at lower rates, defendants submitted blatantly false financial data to the accountants, resulting in fraudulent financial statements. When confronted at trial with the statements, defendants' fact and expert witnesses simply denied reality, and defendants failed to accept responsibility or to impose internal controls to prevent future recurrences."

Of Donald Trump Jr., Engoron wrote, "Despite disclaiming responsibility for or knowledge of the Statements of Financial Conditions' contents, Trump, Jr. still insisted that the Statements of Financial Condition were 'materially accurate.'"

Engoron's decision follows an 11-week civil trial in New York, where Trump and three of his adult children testified.

New York Attorney General Letitia James sued Trump, his two adult sons, and Trump Organization executives in September 2022 for issuing fraudulent financial statements -- including over 200 false and misleading asset values between 2011 and 2021 -- to get better loan terms and business deals.

Judge Arthur Engoron fired back at defense lawyers Thursday regarding former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, who was allegedly engaged in plea talks with the Manhattan DA's office to resolve a potential perjury charge.

Engoron had asked the lawyers in the case for information on Weisselberg's potential guilty plea, based on reporting from The New York Times. One of the defense lawyers responded by characterizing the request as "unprecedented, inappropriate, and troubling."

"Arguing against judicial notice is attacking a straw person, as I have not taken, do not plan to take, and did not suggest or hint that I would take judicial notice of the subject New York Times article or the contents thereof," Engoron wrote in an email posted to the court's docket.

However, Engoron vowed that he would research and consider the issue if Weisselberg, a defendant in the fraud case, pleads guilty to perjury before Engoron issues his final ruling in the case.

"I am not reopening the case, but if someone pleads guilty to committing perjury in a case over which I am presiding, I want to know about it," Engoron said, adding that he reached out to Weisselberg's attorney for more information.

"You and your co-counsel have been questioning my impartiality since the early days of this case, presumably because I sometimes rule against your clients," Engoron wrote. "That whole approach is getting old."

Deutsche Bank was a serious company in business with Donald Trump to make money, defense attorney Jesus Suarez said during his cross examination of former Deutsche Bank executive Nicholas Haigh.

At the height of its relationship with the Trump Organization the company loaned Trump over $378 million, and failed to commission independent appraisals of Trump's properties, Haigh acknowledged. While the bank listed lower estimates for the value of Trump's assets year after year, it continued to do business with Trump and his company.

"We ... the bank hadn't done all the due diligence one would do in the sense of the opinion of value you see in an appraisal," Haigh said, at one point agreeing with the defense's characterization that the bank's internal value services group conducted "sanity checks'' on the numbers.

The direct examination of Haigh by state attorney Kevin Wallace also left a central question about Deutsche Bank's activity unanswered.

In a letter to the court and in previous arguments, lawyers for the attorney general suggested that Haigh might have turned away Trump's business if he had known that Trump's assets were inflated in value.

"As this Court noted during summary judgment arguments, Mr. Haigh testified during OAG's investigation that he may not have authorized lending to the borrower if he had at that time been aware of the inflated asset values contained in Mr. Trump's SFCs [statements of financial condition]," a lawyer for the attorney general wrote to the court in a letter last week.

Wallace never directly posed the hypothetical to Haigh during his direct examination, leaving the question unresolved.

Court subsequently adjourned for the day, with Suarez telling the court he plans to continue his cross examination of Haigh through Thursday afternoon.