Trump spokeswoman and attorney Alina Habba has vowed legal vengeance against New York Attorney General Letitia James after she managed to win a massive $344 million settlement from the former president in a civil fraud case last week.
Judge Arthur Engoron gave James nearly all of the $370 million she sought against Donald Trump and his two sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump after he decided last fall that they had committed fraud in order to secure more favorable loan rates from banks by overinflating the value of their assets.
In an interview on Friday with Fox News host Sean Hannity — the day of Engoron’s ruling — Habba said that “the biggest message” she could give is that Engoron and James were “not going to get away with it. She also suggested that James may have coordinated with the Biden administration.
“There is a point, and I want to say something that I don’t normally do; we have the order now; I’m free to speak. And let me just say […]; they will not get away with it. We will come at them, we will come hard, and we will literally fight until the truth comes out,” she said.
“There was nothing wrong. President Trump has done nothing wrong. All he has done is won a campaign, and that is scaring them. Because they know when he goes back in November 2024, he is going to clean house, and that is truly the problem,” she added.
Shark Tank star and investor Kevin O’Leary said this week that former President Donald Trump’s fraud ruling is making him rethink investing in the “mega loser state” of New York.
“I’m not different than any other investor. I’m shocked at this. I can’t even understand or fathom the decision at all. There’s no rationale for it,” O’Leary said during an interview on Fox Business Network’s “Cavuto Coast To Coast.”
“It does not matter what the governor says. New York was already a loser state, like California is a loser state. There are many loser states because of policy, high taxes, uncompetitive regulation it was already on the top of the list to be the loser state. I would never invest in New York now. I’m not the only person saying that,” O’Leary said.
“That is why New Yorkers should be concerned. The fine people of New York should ask themselves, why are we a loser state? How are we going to attract business? It is not just the existing businesses moving to Texas and Florida; what about new money that I’m talking about, like a four billion-dollar data center? Not a chance I would put that in New York,” O’Leary added.
He concluded, “They have a lot of work to do to find themselves getting out of the situation, and this has occurred post-pandemic. It’s winner versus loser states; look at Tennessee, the fastest growing city in Nashville, with good policy and competitive taxes. You gotta start thinking about this in the context of winners and losers. New York is a mega loser state.”
In an interview with “Fox & Friends Weekend,” O’Leary even said it’s not necessarily about Trump.
“Forget about the Trump factor,” he said. “It’s not about that. What does this say to everybody that wants to do work in New York and wants to risk capital? … this judge arbitrarily decide[d] that this is the right amount. I don’t understand it. No developer does.”
He added, “It’s an atrocity. It’s an embarrassment, but it’s an assault on real estate.”
O’Leary pointed out that very few business sectors generate the level of cash flow that real estate does. He argued that what Trump was found liable for is not markedly distinct from the standard “haggling” that occurs between a potential debtor and a bank.
“You go to a bank, and you say, ‘Look, I want to borrow $200 million to build a building’. And they say, ‘What assets do you have that we can secure this loan against?’ And you point to a building you built before, and you haggle, and you argue about the value of that building,” O’Leary said.
