Amid a fraud case brought by New York state Attorney General Letitia James in which trial Judge Arthur Engoron already imposed financial penalties on ex-President Donald Trump approaching half a billion dollars when including interest, Engoron is threatening an expansion of the time that a court-backed monitor is actively overseeing key business activities of the Trump Organization.
Engoron said that, in the event of violations of the order outlining the monitor’s work, the “Court may modify this Monitorship Order, including as to the scope and length of the monitorship, and order such relief as the Court deems just and proper.”
The monitor, retired federal Judge Barbara Jones, has already been carrying out oversight of Trump business activities for awhile, but Engoron issued an updated order outlining her role this week following developments including his own massive judgment against Trump and other defendants in the civil case. The others include children of the former president Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, though not Ivanka Trump, who was removed from the case as it snaked towards the eventually extensive trial.
Jones’ general responsibilities are, per the new order, oversight of defendants’ “internal accounting controls, governance, record-keeping, and financial reporting policies and procedures.”
The ex-president is currently struggling amid the fraud case in the face of demands for a bond covering his penalties that would stave off collections amid his appeals. Recent court filings said that dozens of bond companies rejected Trump amid his push for the agreement, and now, Trump and his team are pushing for the relevant authorities to lift the requirement he post any bond at all. Online, Trump is calling the demands “impossible” to fulfill, claiming that bond companies broadly just won’t do it and pointing to the potentially unrecoverable costs inherent to setting up an agreement.
James, meanwhile, has undertaken the first steps towards a potential seizure of Trump property to cover the penalties, filing the judgment against Trump with authorities in a New York county housing a Trump property called Seven Springs.
