Judge Engoron’s Trump Ruling Might Be Falling Apart

An appellate court has “serious concerns” about the $454 million verdict in Donald Trump’s fraud case, a legal expert has said.

Greg Germain, a law professor at Syracuse University in New York, told Newsweek that Trump had a strong case to challenge Judge Arthur Engoron’s “seriously flawed” ruling that the former president must pay $454 million for overinflating the value of his assets.

Monday, the First Department of the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court reduced the bond Trump had to post in the case from $454 million to $175 million.

It also gave the presumptive Republican nominee in the 2024 presidential election 10 additional days to raise the payment. Newsweek contacted Trump’s attorney for comment by email.

If Trump raises the money, the court will put a stay on any enforcement proceedings against his assets while he appeals the fraud judgment.

“I think the $175 million reduction … shows that the appellate division has serious concerns about the validity of Judge Engoron’s decision,” Germain said.

He added that he believed Trump had “zero chance of overturning Judge Engoron’s factual findings that his financial statement was grossly overstated.”

“The standard for the appeals court to review factual findings is ‘clearly erroneous,’ which means that there was no evidence in the record to support the judge’s findings. Engoron was very careful to cite to the record for his factual findings, which were very solid,” Germain continued.

Germain said he believed Trump had “much stronger arguments” to attack Engoron’s conclusion that the New York attorney general did not have to prove that anyone relied on Trump’s exaggerated claims to punish Trump.

He added that the correct interpretation of New York law was to punish someone for misleading statements “if someone relied on or was harmed by the information.”

He also said Engoron’s method for calculating the amount of disgorgement was “seriously flawed.”

“Disgorgement case law holds that the unjust enrichment must be attributable solely to the wrongful conduct,” the law professor said.

Germain also said he believed Engoron “made no attempt to determine what portion of the profit was solely due to the financial statement as opposed to other factors.”

He continued: “So Trump has some strong legal arguments to make on appeal. Unfortunately for him, I think he’s so focused on denying that he did anything wrong that the strong legal arguments may be lost in his unwinnable arguments on the facts.”

In September 2022, New York Attorney General Letitia James sued Trump, his two adult sons—Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump—the Trump Organization, and two firm executives, Allen Weisselberg and Jeff McConney. Engoron, who oversaw the trial, found that Trump inflated his assets to get more favorable business loans. In late 2023 and continuing into early January, a trial was held to determine how much the former president and his associates would pay in damages.

On February 16, Engoron ruled that Trump would have to pay about $454 million in penalties, including interest. To appeal the fraud ruling, Trump has to first pay the full amount of the penalty. His lawyers, however, said in a filing on March 21 that he would have to pay 120 percent of the judgment, or more than $557 million, to obtain the bond.

As part of the ruling, Trump, Weisselberg and McConney would also be barred from serving as officers or directors of any New York corporation or other legal entity in the state for three years. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump were ordered to each pay more than $4 million and were barred from doing business in the state for two years.

The former president has maintained his innocence in the case and has said it and the other legal matters he faces are politically motivated.