Trump sentenced to billions in fines and food bans

Trump and his sons have previously been convicted of exaggerating their and the family company’s net worth by several million dollars each year for a decade to get better loan terms. Then the court ordered that his business empire be partially dissolved. On Friday, however, the court backed away from the decision to dissolve the companies.

Instead, the ex-president now receives a heavy fine and a three-year business ban in New York. Sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. prohibited from being board members of New York-based companies for 2 years.

Trump has denied wrongdoing and called the allegations a political vendetta. He is expected to appeal Friday’s decision from the court in New York, writes Reuters.

Trump: Witch hunt

Donald Trump calls the verdict a “witch hunt” and accuses the judge of being “corrupt” in a post on his social media platform Truth Social.

“A corrupt judge in New York state, working with a totally corrupt attorney general who went to the election saying ‘I’m going to take Trump,’ before he knew anything about me or my company, has just fined me $355 million, based on nothing but that I have built a great company. Interference in the election. Witch hunt,” writes Trump.

His lawyer Alina Habba writes on X, formerly Twitter, that they trust that the appeals court will overturn the sentence and that the sentence is the culmination of a “multi-year, politically driven witch hunt” to put Trump there.

Several lawsuits

The ex-president is in several lawsuits. He is charged in four cases, including one in New York involving payments to a porn star ahead of the 2016 election.

He has also been indicted in Florida for his handling of classified documents when he left office, and in Georgia for trying to influence the state’s 2020 election results.

In any case, Trump has maintained that he is innocent.