Personal and business legal affairs of Donald Trump

[8] In January 2023, a federal judge fined Trump and his attorney nearly $1 million, characterizing him as "a prolific and sophisticated litigant who is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries".

[17][18] In 2024, Trump was convicted on numerous counts of falsifying business records related to hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels,[19] although his sentencing was indefinitely postponed following his second election to the presidency.

[42] Trump filed the action after separately being sued by Briarcliff Manor for "intentional and illegal modifications" to a drainage system that caused more than $238,000 in damage to the village's library, public pool, and park facilities during a 2011 storm.

[46] On January 10, 2022, Trump filed a motion for a preliminary injunction to prevent the New York Attorney General from continuing her investigation until a final judgement on his complaint had been made, arguing her inquiry was entirely baseless.

[64][65] In 1991, Trump Plaza was fined $200,000 by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission for moving African American and female employees from craps tables in order to accommodate high roller Robert LiButti, a mob figure and alleged John Gotti associate, who was said to fly into fits of racist rage when he was on losing streaks.

A political analyst from Nevada, Jon Ralston, tweeted that the Trump lawsuit was "insane" in a state that clearly allowed the polls to remain open until everyone in line had voted.

[135] In 2008, developer Leslie Dick Worldwide Ltd., New York, filed a RICO complaint against 17 parties, including Donald Trump, financier George Soros, Fortress Investment Group and Cerberus Capital Management, over the 2003 sale of the General Motors Corp. Building in midtown Manhattan.

The Trump Organization's lawyer said that Monnin's allegations had cost the pageant a lucrative BP sponsorship deal and threatened to discourage women from entering Miss USA contests in the future.

The board rejected his request, stating that their "reviews concluded 'no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes.'"

[159][160][161] On January 17, 2017, Summer Zervos, represented by attorney Gloria Allred, filed a defamation suit against President-elect Donald Trump for claiming that she had lied in her public sexual assault allegations against him.

[166] Trump has been accused of racism for insisting that a group of black and Latino teenagers were guilty of raping a white woman in the 1989 Central Park jogger case, even after they were exonerated by DNA evidence in 2002.

In pre-trial depositions, Trump and two of his business officials – attorney George H. Ross and executive vice president of global licensing Cathy Glosser – gave contradictory statements regarding whether ALM was entitled to payments.

Further, she alleges that these accomplices pressured her to sign a settlement agreement by threatening to bankrupt interests benefitting her and cut off the healthcare insurance for her infant nephew, who was then suffering from cerebral palsy.

He asked that Trump and campaign advisor Dan Scavino's testimony be permanently sealed because it would give an "unwarranted competitive advantage" to his opponents in the 2024 presidential election, and because it "could be used against them in other, parallel, litigations unrelated to this matter.".

[202] The case was dismissed from U.S. federal court in March 2016, in part because Palmer's immigration status, via H1-B visa sponsored by Trump, required labor complaints to be filed through a separate process.

[207][209] Also in July 2015, Chef Geoffrey Zakarian decided to withdraw from the Washington, D.C., project together with Andrés in the wake of Trump's comments on Mexican illegal immigrants, and is expected to lose his own $500,000 restaurant lease deposit as a result.

The appeals court ruled in May to let the case proceed, stating that there was "a substantial basis in law" for breach of contract but that the duration of the confidentiality agreement needed to be determined and that Donald had to prove whether the disclosure had caused him any damages.

[233] On Saturday, April 1, 2017, Judge David J. Hale in Louisville ruled against the dismissal of a lawsuit, stating there was ample evidence to support that the injuries of the protesters were a "direct and proximate result" of Trump's words and actions.

Heimbach, "a self-employed landscaper", and a member of the Traditionalist Youth Network, "which advocates separate American 'ethno states', "spends much of his time" online writing "against Jews, gays and immigrants and urging whites to stand up for their race."

"[239] New York University's Samuel Issacharoff, a professor of constitutional law, argued that care must be taken to not allow speech, in the "context of a political rally" to be "turned into something that is legally sanctionable.

"[257] The Wall Street Journal reported on November 9, 2018, that federal prosecutors have evidence of Trump's "central role" in payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal that violated campaign-finance laws.

[307][308] On the question of obstruction of justice, Barr stated that Mueller did not reach a conclusion; he quotes the special counsel as saying "while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.

[314] The New York Times reported in December 2018 that federal prosecutors in Manhattan and Brooklyn are investigating whether Middle Eastern foreigners sought to buy influence over American policies by using straw donors to illegally funnel donations to Trump's inaugural committee and a pro-Trump Super PAC.

[316] The subpoena reportedly covered allegations of conspiracy to defraud the United States government, money laundering, false statements, mail and wire fraud, disclosure violations and prohibitions against contributions by foreign nations.

[319][320] Regarding the various irregularities in the Trump Foundation, former head of the Internal Revenue Service's Office of Exempt Organizations Division Marc Owens told The Washington Post that he was surprised by the "laundry list of issues".

"[378] Mafia-connected union boss John Cody supplied Trump with concrete in exchange for giving his mistress a high-level apartment with a pool, which required extra structural reinforcement.

[379][380][328] Trump Plaza paid a $450,000 fine leveled by the Casino Gaming Commission for giving $1.6 million in rare automobiles to Robert LiButti, the acquaintance of John Gotti already mentioned.

[402] In June 2016, a USA Today article reported that Donald Trump and his companies have been deleting emails and other documents on a large scale,[374] including evidence in lawsuits, sometimes in defiance of court orders and under subpoena since as early as 1973.

"Over the course of decades, Donald Trump's companies have systematically destroyed or hidden thousands of emails, digital records and paper documents demanded in official proceedings, often in defiance of court orders....

In each instance, Trump and entities he controlled also erected numerous hurdles that made lawsuits drag on for years, forcing courtroom opponents to spend huge sums of money in legal fees as they struggled—sometimes in vain—to obtain records.