(NewsReady.com) – New York Attorney General Letitia James won a civil fraud suit against former President Donald Trump and the Trump Organization. The former POTUS was ordered to pay an astronomical fine and banned from doing business in the state for three years. Now, he has requested a stay.
On Friday, February 16, Judge Arthur Engoron ordered Trump to pay almost $355 million plus about $100 million in interest. The former president was found liable for lying on financial documents and manipulating the value of his properties and his net worth in order to get loans. Each day Trump doesn’t pay the verdict, $87,502 in interest is added to the bill.
After the judgment was handed down, Trump’s legal team requested that Engoron delay the payments by 30 days. The request stated there was already a court-appointed monitor in place, so it shouldn’t have been an issue to “briefly” stay the judgment’s enforcement to allow the post-trial process to take place.
Andrew Amer, a special counsel for the AG’s office, implored the judge to refuse the stay. He argued that the president’s legal team didn’t provide a basis for staying the enforcement. He also said the defendants made the same request in the post-trial brief, and the court declined to grant the request.
The judge responded to the request in an email on Thursday to the former president’s attorney, Clifford Robert. In the message, Engoron told the lawyer that he “failed to explain, much less justify, any basis for a stay.” The judge told Robert to appeal the decision to the appeals court, saying he was “confident that the Appellate Division will protect your appellate rights.”
Trump can appeal the court ruling to a higher court and is expected to do that. However, he will have to secure a bond for about $540 million in the meantime. That might be hard to do because there’s a possibility he won’t be able to use his properties as collateral. Instead, he might have to liquidate some of his assets, and on top of the fees he’s already paying, the bond company will also charge millions.
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