"Borders on Pathological": Trump Must Pay $450 Million for Lying to Lenders in Fraud Case

The legal setbacks facing leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump are piling up. He now has 30 days to pay $450 million in fines and penalties from a civil fraud case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James. His two eldest sons face a two-year ban and were each ordered to pay $4 million. Trump says he plans to appeal the ruling, which he described as a “complete and total sham.” But the appeal is unlikely to succeed, says Russ Buettner, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist whose reporting for The New York Times led to the state’s case. He lays out how records showed an “overwhelming pattern” of Trump’s businesses “lying to their lenders.” Buettner, who describes Trump as cash-poor, says the penalties will result in “a blow to his personal finances and his business finances that he really can’t handle at this point.”