After the Trump Organization was ordered to pay $355 million in a New York civil fraud trial and banned from doing business in the state for three years, New York Times investigative reporter David Fahrenthold said on Friday that it may not completely bankrupt Donald Trump, but the ruling will certainly “shrink” the former president’s real estate empire.
“I don’t think anybody should expect we’ll see Donald Trump in a barrel walking down Fifth Avenue anytime soon,” Fahrenthold told MSNBC’s Katy Tur, suggesting that Trump could sell some of his real estate properties in New York or San Francisco to cover the cost.
“I think the bigger consequence for him will be that this starts to shrink this empire, which was already shrinking. It makes us ask, ‘What’s the point of the Trump Organization? Is it just to house Donald Trump and give him a place to have parties, or is it really a business?’” Fahrenthold added.
The Trump Organization issued a statement that the court’s judgment is a “gross overreach,” but Fahrenthold said that no one else was committing fraud on the same level as Trump.
“Trump has always tried to sort of cast himself as sort of a martyr for a broader community or to say, ‘Hey, look, what I did is just what everybody else did,’” Fahrenthold said.
“Nobody does what he did … nobody makes up houses … nobody makes up facts and uses those fake facts to justify a bigger value,” the journalist added. “So it’s not like he’s doing something that other people are doing and they might have to worry. What he did was sort of in a class by itself.”
During the trial, Trump’s team only admitted to making a mistake about the square footage of the Trump penthouse in Trump Tower, and never showed any remorse for years of fraudulent reports, Fahrenthold noted.
“This is how they approach legal fights and they have for decades, they never admit defeat,” he added. “Never admitting fault, never complying with the rules, trying to delay and attack the judge that’s been how they’ve done things forever. They’ve never ever tried admitting fault and showing remorse. I don’t expect them to start now.”
Watch the full MSNBC segment in the video above.
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