Left, Brandon Bell/Getty Images. Right, Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
In a major legal blow to former President Donald Trump and his real-estate empire, a Manhattan judge has ordered the Trump Organization to submit to a court-appointed, independent monitor.
Monitoring is necessary given Trump and his company's "demonstrated propensity to engage in persistent fraud," wrote the judge, state Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, siding with the New York attorney general's office.
Attorney General Letitia James had requested the intervention as part of her $250 million fraud lawsuit against the former president, his family, and his business.
Trump's lawyers had fought hard in court papers and in oral arguments Thursday against any monitoring, which James had demanded due to what she described as the company's ongoing fraud.
In arguments before the judge hours before the ruling, Trump attorney Christopher Kise called the idea of monitoring "drastic" and likened it to "nationalizing" the company.
The ruling was made by the same judge who held Trump in contempt over the summer — and fined him $110,000 — for failing to fully comply with James' subpoenas for his personal business documents during the investigation that led to September's lawsuit.
The ruling is a victory for James, who had requested Trump's business — which is headquarted in the state — be monitored due to what her office has described as an ongoing pattern of fraud.
It's the first big legal battle in a new $250 million fraud lawsuit James filed in September to essentially drive him and his company out of New York.
James alleges in the suit that for more than a decade, Trump repeatedly and fraudulently inflated or deflated the assessed values of his properties on financial documents as it suited him, in order to secure tax refunds and favorable terms from lenders.
Trump has insisted personally and through his lawyers that James is pursuing him and his company as part of a "witch hunt" and political vendetta. James, a Democrat, campaigned for attorney general in 2018 on a promise to hold Trump accountable.
This is a breaking story; please check back for further developments.
