Former President Donald Trump owes an additional $87,502 in post-judgment interest every day until he pays the $354 million fine ordered by Judge Arthur Engoron in his civil fraud case, according to ABC News’ calculations based on the judge’s lengthy ruling in the case.
Judge Engoron on Friday fined Trump $354 million plus approximately $100 million in pre-judgment interest in the civil fraud case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, after he found that Trump and his adult sons had inflated Trump’s net worth in order to get more favorable loan terms. The former president has denied all wrongdoing and has said he will appeal.
Engoron ordered Trump to pay pre-judgment interest on each ill-gotten gain – with interest accruing based on the date of each transaction – as well as a 9% post-judgment interest rate once the court enters the judgment in the case.
Okay, so maybe you CAN afford it but you’d rather use the money for something else. The rest of the analogy stays.
He invested the money legally into real estate, he didn’t buy drugs and sold them or anything like that.
Your analogy still doesn’t make sense, you’re doing the same thing you accuse me of: making it worse than it is in order or imply guilt. And no, he didn’t physically rob anybody, the profits the bank missed out on are purely theoretical, just like the profits a software company misses out on when you don’t buy an app you wouldn’t have bought anyways if you couldn’t have pirated it.
“there was no victim” is not a legal defense. You’re trying to compare it to piracy because you’re trying to change the argument from “no one was hurt” to “this shouldn’t be illegal.”
People will argue that piracy shouldn’t be illegal, nobody is arguing that fraud shouldn’t be illegal. As the judge said: just because it worked out for the bank this time, doesn’t mean it will work out okay next time. He did a crime, everyone agrees that it should be a crime, and he needs to face consequences so he and other people don’t do it again in the future. It’s not only a crime if it doesn’t work out for you.
As for no one being harmed: he also undervalued his property to avoid taxes, so the American public was harmed. Hence the DA pressing charges on their behalf.
The bankers testified that they did their own due diligence and did not rely on Trump’s exaggerated claims. They knew the figures he gave them were broad estimates and not necessarily correct.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/29/nyregion/trump-fraud-trial-deutsche-bank.html
He didn’t default on the loan and paid it back in its entirety, with interest. I fail to see who the victim is? Yes, perhaps the bank could have made more money but if they aren’t interested, who got hurt?
That’s why I think the piracy analogy holds up, because if you DO end up paying for the stuff you consumed for free at some point, the studios or software companies only have a temporary loss, but they are missing out on potential interest or investment return they could have earned in the meantime, and whatever amount inflation has devalued the money in the meantime.
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