The yearslong legal saga between Donald Trump and Attorney General Letitia James is finally over after a judge ordered the former president, his company, and associates to pay the state nearly $364 million in penalties.
And the case may have never happened if, years ago, a newly-elected member of Congress from Trump’s home state hadn’t grilled Michael Cohen on Trump’s finances.
The former president will now have to personally cough up $355 million and comply with other penalties for what New York Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron described as “frauds” that “shock the conscience” in his Friday verdict.
The Trump organization said in a statement that the verdict was a “gross miscarriage of justice.” Trump will likely appeal.
With the dozens of details that have come out of this case — gag order drama and lots of testimony from those in Trump’s circle — it may be hard to remember how Trump’s business practices ended up being scrutinized in the first place.
A fresh and ambitious Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — following up on questions asked by former Rep. William Lacy Clay to Michael Cohen about Trump’s business practices — led to James filing the civil suit against Trump that will now cost him millions.
In 2019, Cohen, the former Trump lawyer who was sentenced in 2018 to three years in prison for crimes he committed while working for Trump, testified before the House Oversight and Reform Committee.
Ocasio-Cortez again asked Cohen if the former president had ever inflated his assets. “Yes,” Cohen answered.
“Who else knows that the president did this?” she continued.
“Allen Weisselberg, Ron Lieberman, and Matthew Calamari,” Cohen answered, referring to the former Trump Org CFO, current executive vice president, and current COO, respectively.
Weisselberg was ordered to pay $1 million in penalties on Friday.
“I thank Judge Engoron for his acknowledgment of my veracity and hope this helps to expose Trump, Habba, Kise, and Robert’s never-ending lies and attacks about me,” Cohen said in a statement to Business Insider. “Truth always rises!”
James gave a nod to Ocasio-Cortez’s line of questioning when she filed her lawsuit in 2022.
“I will remind everyone that this investigation only started after Michael Cohen, the former lawyer, his former lawyer, testified before Congress and shed light on this misconduct,” James said at the time.
Cohen later testified in October during the trial, saying that Trump “arbitrarily elected” numbers when valuing his assets. “And my responsibility, along with Allen Weisselberg, primarily, was to reverse engineer” the value of Trump Organization assets, Cohen said, “to achieve the number that Mr. Trump tasked us.”
Representatives for Ocasio-Cortez, Trump, and James did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
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