Businessmen Say They Will No Longer Invest in New York After Justice Engoron’s Trump Ruling

A general view shows the Manhattan skyline from the One Vanderbilt viewing deck in New York City on Jan. 16, 2023. Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images

Some real estate investors are losing interest in investing in the Big Apple after New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron’s staggering ruling last week in a civil fraud case against President Donald Trump.

President Trump and Trump Organization executives were ordered on Feb. 16 to pay $355 million in fines, plus interest, after Justice Engoron found them liable for inflating the values of their assets to obtain better rates from lenders and insurers.

The judge also barred the former president and his sons from managing their businesses in New York for three years.

“I’m shocked at this. I can’t even understand or fathom the decision at all. There’s no rationale for it,” “Shark Tank” investor Kevin O’Leary told Fox Business on Feb. 19.

The Canadian businessman, often called “Mr. Wonderful,” described New York as a “mega loser state” for business.

“New York was already a loser state, like California’s a loser state,” he said. “There are many loser states because of policy, high taxes, uncompetitive regulation. It was already on the top of the list of being a loser state. I would never invest in New York now.”

Instead, Mr. O’Leary said he would be looking to Oklahoma, North Dakota, and West Virginia for future investment opportunities.

“Those are winner states. They don’t do things like this.”

President Trump expressed appreciation for Mr. O’Leary’s comments in a post on his Truth Social platform.

“Kevin O’Leary is so great, and tells it like it is,” he wrote. “Businesses will flee NYC & State after the Corrupt Judge’s ruling!”

And at least one other investor is doing just that.

Grant Cardone, a private equity fund manager and owner of real estate investment firm Cardone Capital, said he was considering investing in New York before Justice Engoron’s ruling.

“CardoneCapital just started to research real estate investments in New York believing it was time to get into the market,” Mr. Cardone said in an X post. “After the over reach [sic.] by the judge in the Trump case & penalties imposed of $355M I told them team do NOT waste time in New York.”

The real estate mogul added that his companies would now be doubling their efforts in Florida, Arizona, Texas, and Tennessee instead.

Mr. Cardone’s comments follow his wife’s creation of a GoFundMe campaign to help raise the $355 million President Trump was fined. More than $660,000 has been raised in the four days since the fundraiser was launched.

“I stand unwaveringly with President Donald Trump in the face of what I see as unprecedented and unfair treatment by certain judicial elements in New York,” Elena Cardone wrote on the GoFundMe webpage. “The recent legal battles he faces are not just an attack on him but an attack on the very ideals of fairness and due process that every American deserves.”

Ms. Cardone also stressed that the purpose of the fundraiser was to defend not only the 45th president but all businesses against “a system that increasingly seeks to penalize dissent and curb our freedoms.”

President Trump’s latest fine adds to the more than $83 million in damages he was recently ordered to pay writer E. Jean Carroll in a defamation case over his denials that he sexually assaulted her. He has pledged to appeal both rulings as he simultaneously fends off four criminal indictments.

The former president maintains that all of his current legal troubles are nothing more than an attempt by Democrats to thwart his campaign to reclaim the White House.

In a Truth Social post, he reiterated that belief and called for an immediate end to “all political prosecutions” against him.

“I should not have to go through any fake prosecutions before the election,” he wrote in all caps on Feb. 19. “This is communism, and a threat to democracy. Our country will not stand for it. Make America great again!!!”