Eric Trump, the son of former President Donald Trump, denounced the nearly $355 million fine imposed on his father by a New York judge on Friday, calling it a “horribly sad” outcome of a politically motivated lawsuit, as reported by The Hill on Friday, February 16, 2024.
The civil fraud trial, which began in October 2023, accused the former president of inflating the value of his assets to secure loans and tax benefits.
The lawsuit, filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James, sought $2.5 billion in damages, but Judge Arthur Engoron reduced the amount to $355 million, citing the statute of limitations and the lack of evidence of actual harm to the lenders or the public.
Eric Trump, who testified in the trial as an executive vice president of the Trump Organization, blasted the judge’s decision as a “setup” and a “witch hunt” against his family.
He said his father did nothing wrong and actually increased the value of his properties.
“My father built a skyline of New York City. And this is the thanks he gets for doing absolutely nothing wrong, not a dollar of financial loss?
The exact opposite, hundreds of millions of dollars in financial gain,” he said Friday evening on Fox News’s “The Ingraham Angle.”
He also claimed that none of the witnesses supported the allegations of fraud and that the judge ignored their testimonies.
“Every single witness testified we have nothing to do with this.
They went in, witness after witness, this is not what they did in the company. It didn’t matter to this guy.
You know, we were trophies on a wall for this guy,” he added. “This is the state of New York.”
Eric Trump railed against the state’s leadership, echoing his father’s claim that the lawsuit was political from the start.
He said the state was “hopeless” and “politically weaponized” and warned people against moving there.
“I caution anybody. I caution anybody even thinking about moving to New York to just be careful.
This is not the state that my father grew up in. This is not the state that we grew up in,” he told guest host Jeanine Pirro.
“This is the demise of a politically weaponized system. And it’s horribly sad.”
“New York is a hopeless place at this point. It’s so sad. This judge ruled against my father before we even went to trial.
He ruled against our entire family. It was a setup from the very beginning,” he added.
“This was never supposed to be in that court. It was supposed to be in the commercial division. They would never allow it to get there.”
The former president, who did not appear in the trial, also issued a statement on Friday, calling the verdict “a disgrace” and “a travesty of justice.”
