Trump $354 Million Fraud Verdict Includes New York Business Ban for 3 Years

New York Judge Arthur Engoron found former President Donald Trump guilty of “fraud” BEFORE trial and ordered him to pay over $350 million in “damages” to the State of New York last Friday. Trump and the other defendants were found liable for fraud by Engoron before the trial even began and never got a jury trial on liability and issued a summary judgment that the defendants committed fraud in violation of New York law.

The ruling against Trump, without a jury trial, is a miscarriage of justice and is similar to the Sandy Hook cases against Jim Fetzer and Alex Jones whose cases were decided by judges and the juries were only used to determine damages. A defamation case against Rudy Giuliani was also decided by a judge and the jury was again used only to determine damages.

In 2023, Engoron found that Trump and his company overstated the valuations of many properties by hundreds of millions. The judge cited the Palm Beach, Florida, real estate assessor’s valuation of his Mar-a-Lago club at a low of $18 million — an amount on which Trump paid local property taxes. At the same time, Trump valued the property at as much as $714 million on his annual statements of financial conditions.

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New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron ruled last fall that Trump and his company, the Trump Organization, “repeatedly” violated state fraud law by systemically misrepresenting the value of some of his properties and his overall net worth.

A judge’s ruling on Friday in Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial deals a severe blow to the former president, who is now barred from running the New York-based company that for decades has served as the hub of his global business empire.

In a 92-page decision, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron barred Trump from serving as an officer or director of any corporation or other legal entity in the state for three years, while his sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., were banned for two years, according to the ruling.

Trump and The Trump Organization were also ordered to pay penalties of $354 million in what is one of the stiffest corporate sanctions in New York history. The total jumps to $453.5 million when pre-judgment interest is factored in.

Engoron ruled last fall that Trump and his company, the Trump Organization, “repeatedly” violated state fraud law by systemically misrepresenting the value of some of his properties and his overall net worth. That enabled his business to obtain loan rates and other financial terms that they otherwise wouldn’t have received, New York Attorney General Letitia James had claimed in filing suit against Trump.

More specifically, James’ allegations included falsifying business records, issuing false financial statements and insurance fraud. James’ office claimed that Trump’s misrepresentations led to the company collecting $370 million in “ill-gotten gains.”

Friday’s ruling also appoints Judge Barbara Jones to continue in her role as an independent monitor of Trump’s businesses for at least three years. It orders the addition of an independent director of compliance at the Trump Organization, with Engoron ruling that this person will be responsible for “ensuring good financial and accounting practices.”

“[T]he more evidence there is of defendants’ ongoing propensity to engage in fraud, the more need there is for the Court to impose stricter injunctive relief,” Engoron wrote in his verdict. “This is not defendants’ first rodeo.”

It’s possible Trump could appoint a trusted adviser to run his business during the three-year ban, noted John Coffee, a professor at Columbia Law School and an expert on corporate governance and white collar crime.

“I doubt that he can appoint someone else without the court’s approval, but one candidate that he will think of is Ivanka, his daughter, who is not a defendant,” Coffee told CBS MoneyWatch. “When Martha Stewart was barred from serving as a director of her own business, which like Trump had her name on it, she appointed her daughter as CEO for three years.”

Ivanka Trump, once an executive at The Trump Organization, was originally named as a defendant in the fraud suit, but an appellate court later dismissed allegations against her due to the state’s statute of limitations.

Trump: “unAmerican judgment against me”

In a statement, Trump, who is expected to appeal, decried the verdict, calling it “unAmerican” and “a Complete and Total SHAM.”

“There were No Victims, No Damages, No Complaints,” Trump said in his statement. “Only satisfied Banks and Insurance Companies (which made a ton of money), GREAT Financial Statements, that didn’t even include the most valuable Asset – The TRUMP Brand.”

The decision comes just weeks after a federal jury ruled that Trump must pay $83.3 million in damages for defamatory statements he made denying that he sexually assaulted the writer E. Jean Carroll. Trump is also facing numerous additional legal cases.

“These bills are really racking up for Trump,” said CBS News legal analyst Katrina Kaufman shortly before the verdict was announced. James “asked for a lifetime ban on Trump in New York’s real estate industry, which is huge for him. This is where he started as a businessman.”

Trump could see the damages reduced on appeal, Columbia’s Coffee said. But to appeal, Trump would have to post a bond covering the $354 million in penalties, he added.

Read full article here…

Information Liberation:        https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=64301




Rudy Giuliani Hit with $148 Million Blowout Verdict in Election Worker Defamation Case

Rudy Giuliani, the former Mayor of New York during 9/11 and a former federal prosecutor, is the defendant in a defamation case brought by two 2020 election workers from Georgia whom he accused of ballot fraud. Giuliani was declared liable in the defamation case in August 2023 by Judge Beryl Howell after he repeatedly refused court orders to turn over evidence in the case to the plaintiffs. While a jury was used to determine damages in the case, Giuliani was denied a jury trial over the evidence. He claims that electronic evidence was seized and held by the FBI and he did not have access to it. He refused to testify on his own behalf, claiming the judge would jail him for contempt. A jury awarded $148 million to the plaintiffs, Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss. The Sandy Hook cases against Alex Jones are similar to Giulian’s case as Jones was refused trials by jury and lost his cases by default because he failed to produce data and evidence required during the trial.  

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Summary by JW Williams

Atlanta, Georgia: Election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss won a $148 million jury award in a defamation case against Rudy Giuliani who said that they committed ballot fraud in the 2020 election by changing votes.

Shaye Moss reportedly removed everyone from the State Farm Arena on 2020 Election night and sent them home, and then she and her mother, Ruby Freeman, and her boss, Ralph Jones, were recorded on video allegedly pulling suitcases filled with ballots from under a covered table and jamming them into the vote tabulation machines.  The trio were filmed pushing stacks of ballots through the machines two and three times each.

Business Insider reported that In June, Georgia’s State Election Board dismissed its years-long investigation into the alleged election fraud, clearing the women of any alleged wrongdoing. Critics disagree with their findings and the result.

Attorneys for Ruby Freeman asked the jury to award just $24 million to each plaintiff plus money for emotional distress and punitive damages. The jury added an additional $100 million to Ruby and Shaye’s massive demand.

While a jury decided the damages for the case, the jury never heard the facts of the case as Judge Beryl Howell, who was appointed by Obama, decided Giuliani was legally liable for defaming  Ruby and Shaye because he was late in producing relevant evidence to plaintiffs’ attorneys, according to the Gateway Pundit. Judge Howell pronounced Giuliani guilty without a jury trial because he failed to comply with discovery.

The Gateway Pundit further reported that Giuliani could not turn over the documents to the attorneys because he was not holding the information – investigators were holding it in another case against Giuliani. It appears investigators may have lost a significant portion of the information that was turned over.

According to CNN, Judge Howell complained that Giuliani had only turned over fewer than 200 relevant documents, a single page of communications, a few legal responses, a “sliver” of needed financial documents and “blobs of indecipherable data.” Giuliani had claimed that the FBI seizure of his electronic devices years ago hobbled his access to his records and that he had struggled under pricey legal fees. But the judge said he could have taken steps at an earlier point to keep his records in case litigation arose in the future.

In July 2023, Giuliani conceded that he made public comments falsely claiming the election workers committed ballot fraud during the 2020 election, but he contended that the statements were protected by the First Amendment.

A spokesman for Giuliani said, “This decision should be reversed, as Mayor Giuliani is wrongly accused of not preserving electronic evidence that was seized and held by the FBI.” Judge Howell said that it is not the government’s job to preserve Giuliani’s electronically stored information. Giuliani did not take steps to preserve evidence despite his decades of experience as a lawyer, including as the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan.

In an interview, Giuliani said,  “I can tell you that this is an absurd verdict of $148,000,000. And the case was even more absurd than the verdict because it wasn’t a case that anybody would recognize who is an American or English lawyer. I never put on a defense. I was never allowed to put on a defense. The judge found me guilty, liable based on failure to turn over several documents after turning over thousands, none of which have a bearing on liability, but maybe on the ability to pay.”

Giuliani never presented a case and he refused to testify in his own defense on the stand. He said that the judge did not find him liable based on evidence, but for failing to produce the discovery the judge thought he should produce. He said that the FBI seized his documents and found him not guilty in their investigation. During the trial on damages, Giuliani said that the judge would not allow him to enter evidence “with regard to what I would say is my innocence because that would contradict her ruling and be contempt.” He said that Judge Howell cut his lawyer off during cross examination for questions being outside the scope of the case. He claimed that Judge Howell warned him that if he got on the witness stand and testified in the same manner in which he spoke out of court about being innocent and what he could prove, she would be required to hold him in contempt and he said this would result in jail time.

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Link for video:      https://www.bitchute.com/video/mhbg2BlOMtYf/

Giuliani said, “I’ve never heard of a case like that where a judge finds liability based on the failure to turn over tangentially relevant documents.”

However, Giuliani’s case is similar to the Sandy Hook cases against Alex Jones who was was involved in three Sandy Hook lawsuits, was refused trials by jury and lost his cases by default because he failed to produce data and evidence required during the trial. The Deseret News reported that the default judgement was an exceedingly rare ruling that stated Jones’ team “have shown a deliberate, contumacious, and unwarranted disregard for (the) Court’s authority.”

David Knight, a former contributor to Alex Jones’ InfoWars, said that Jones inadvertently told the truth when he said on his show, “I’ve been sitting there, the final witness in the trial, where I’m already found guilty by the judge for not giving stuff over.”

Sources:

Gateway Pundit:      https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/12/breaking-dc-judge-orders-americas-mayor-rudy-giuliani/

Giuliani interview:      https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/12/obama-judge-forbid-rudy-giuliani-defending-himself-against/

CNN:      https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/30/politics/rudy-giuliani-georgia-election-workers/index.html

AP News:      https://apnews.com/article/giuliani-georgia-election-workers-defamation-lawsuit-9b561a195fb74d991abc89d1b6587d66  

Business Insider:      https://www.businessinsider.com/rudy-giuliani-sanctioned-georgia-defamation-case-2023-8?op=1

Need to Know News:      https://needtoknow.news/2022/08/alex-jones-ordered-to-pay-45-million-in-sandy-hook-case/




Jim Fetzer, Author of ‘Nobody Died at Sandy Hook’, Denied Jury Trial and Ordered to Pay Sandy Hook Victim’s Father $450,000

Jim Fetzer is a former philosophy professor from the University of Minnesota Duluth and the author of Nobody Died at Sandy Hook, a book that explains why he believes the reported shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School was a hoax. He was sued by Lenny Pozner, father of six-year old Noah Pozner, who was reportedly shot to death on December 14, 2012. Lenny Pozner claimed Fetzer’s writing caused him to suffer from PTSD. A jury in Dane County, Wisconsin ordered Fetzer to pay $450,000 in damages to Pozner for defamation, based on accusations that Noah Pozner’s death certificate was fake. Dane County Circuit Judge Frank Remington denied Fetzer’s request for a jury trial and issued a summary judgement that Pozner, indeed, had been defamed. A jury was allowed to assemble for the part of the trial dealing with the penalty, but the judge prevented the jury from hearing Fetzer’s evidence that Noah’s death certificate was fake. -GEG

Madison, WI

Jim Fetzer’s defense against Lenny Pozner’s defamation suit got interesting today, day two of the penalty phase of the trial. (Disclaimer: I have been friends with Jim since 2006, and though I don’t always agree with him, I respect his courage and sincerity. It was an honor to have lunch with him on this, the critical day of the penalty phase of his trial.)

Pozner won the first phase last June when the court determined that four of Fetzer’s statements alleging a fake death certificate for Noah Pozner were defamatory; then on September 13 Fetzer was found in contempt of court for sharing images of Pozner’s deposition. Fetzer argues that he shared the images, which the court had deemed confidential, as part of his legal defense research. Fetzer claims the images show that the Lenny Pozner in the deposition is not the same person depicted in at least some previous publicly circulated images of Lenny Pozner.

Pozner is asking for one million dollars in damages from Fetzer. The jury’s job is to determine an award amount, which theoretically could range anywhere between zero and one million dollars.

The penalty phase of the trial began Monday with opening arguments and a lengthy videotaped deposition of a forensic psychologist, who asserts that Pozner suffers from PTSD as a result of Fetzer’s four defamatory statements. The forensic psychologist, who was presumably hired by Pozner’s legal team, predictably supported Pozner’s narrative: After suffering the loss of his son Noah at Sandy Hook, Pozner says, he experienced PTSD for more than a year, only to have his recovery cut short, and his symptoms exacerbated, by his discovery that online Sandy Hook skeptics were claiming that the school shooting was a hoax in which nobody died. Since then, Pozner says, he has been waging an online battle against Sandy Hook skeptics (he calls them “hoaxers”) which has kept him mired in PTSD. Much or most of the suffering he has experienced, Pozner suggests, is the fault of Jim Fetzer, whom Pozner and his lawyers are casting as the kingpin and prime inspiration of the Sandy Hook skeptics’ movement.

Fetzer’s legal team questioned the “Fetzer caused my PTSD” claim. While acknowledging that Pozner would have suffered PTSD from the loss of his son in December 2012, they suggested that it was not entirely Fetzer’s fault that Pozner has been re-traumatizing himself by spending much of his time since 2014 combing the internet for material that he says traumatizes him and trying to get it removed. Fetzer’s team’s cross-examination of the psychologist pointed out that normally PTSD sufferers avoid stimuli that reawaken the trauma.
Read full article here…

From The Wrap:

The award of damages comes four months after Dane County Circuit Judge Frank Remington issued a summary judgement that Fetzer and co-author Mike Palecek had defamed Pozner by falsely claiming that the death certificate for Pozner’s son, Noah, had been faked.

https://www.thewrap.com/father-of-sandy-hook-victim-awarded-450000-in-defamation-lawsuit-against-nobody-died-at-sandy-hook-co-author/

From Rational Wiki:

Fetzer was sued in Wisconsin for defamation and libel by Leonard Pozner, a father of a child who died in the Sandy Hook massacre, primarily for his book, Nobody Died At Sandy Hook: It was a FEMA Drill to Promote Gun Control.[6][7] Fetzer represented himself pro se in the case because he stated it was impossible to find a lawyer to represent him. “Nobody wants to touch” their case, Fetzer said.[8] Fetzer actually argued in Court that the original reasons he called the death certificate a fake were untrue, but then went on to claim that because many variations of the death certificate had been released (including with and without an embossed seal, with handwritten numbers at the top, or with a redaction of the social security number) that the certificates were fabricated. Handwritten differences and variations in the seal on the death certificate was apparently sufficient evidence for Fetzer to claim that Noah Pozner didn’t exist. The judge in the case said there was no question of fact in dispute, and granted summary judgment against Fetzer in favor of Mr. Pozner in the libel case on the issue of liability, allowing it to proceed to a jury to consider damages. The case is currently pending a jury trial on the issue of damages only.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/James_H._Fetzer

Additional sources:

https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/crime-and-courts/jury-awards-sandy-hook-father-for-defamation-by-local-conspiracy/article_cdc741bf-4186-5ff3-af0c-e38be9f26592.html

https://jamesfetzer.org/2019/10/kevin-barrett-the-legal-lynching-of-a-truth-seeker-jim-fetzers-stalinist-style-show-trial/