How did Justice Engoron calculate the disgorgement and penalties in Letitia James’s civil fraud judgment against Trump?

1. What Engoron said he was remedying: returning ill‑gotten gains

Engoron framed disgorgement as a remedy to strip the financial benefit the defendants gained by submitting inflated statements to banks and insurers — in his words, returning “ill‑gotten gains” derived from loans and other favorable financial terms obtained through false valuations ^{[2] [3]}.

2. The core numbers: how much was disgorged and why

The heart of Engoron’s monetary calculation was an assessment that the defendants overstated asset values in sworn financial statements by amounts the judge quantified as producing about $354–355 million in ill‑gotten gains; that figure was the disgorgement principal the court ordered defendants to pay ^{[3] [1] [2]}.

3. Pre‑judgment interest: the daily compound that ballooned the total

Engoron added pre‑judgment interest to the disgorgement at a 9% annual rate, applied from the dates the transactions occurred through the date of judgment, producing more than $98 million in additional liability that made the total ordered in early 2024 roughly $454 million (the pooled figure widely reported) and in some tallies reached higher as interest accrued ^{[1] [5]}.

4. The accounting inputs Engoron relied on — disputes and range

Engoron’s disgorgement rested on his factual findings about specific overstatements in Trump Organization financial statements across years; the judge had earlier found overvaluations ranging in the aggregate between hundreds of millions and as much as $2.2 billion in asset overstatements, and he translated those findings into a disgorgement number his view of the defendants’ ill‑gotten financing benefits justified ^{[4] [3]}. The Attorney General had sought a somewhat larger disgorgement — she asked for roughly $370 million at one point — and Engoron’s $355 million principal fell between the state’s request and other proposed figures ^[3].

5. Why critics said the math was flawed — and what the appeals court later found

Defendants and later appellate judges argued that Engoron’s disgorgement was not a reasonable approximation of actual unjust enrichment; appellate opinions described the calculation as “far from a reasonable approximation” and concluded the monetary penalty was excessive under the Eighth Amendment, vacating the disgorgement while leaving the fraud finding intact ^{[4] [6] [7]}. The mid‑level appeals panel kept nonmonetary restraints Engoron imposed but threw out the nearly half‑billion‑dollar money judgment as excessive ^{[6] [7]}.

6. Where the public record ends and what remains unsettled

The public filings and reporting establish the disgorgement principal Engoron ordered (~$354–355 million), the 9% prejudgment interest figure that swelled the total to roughly $454 million or more, and the appellate reversal of the monetary award ^{[1] [3] [4]}. What those entries do not reveal in full detail in the provided materials is the precise line‑by‑line accounting Engoron used to convert specific overvaluations into that single disgorgement dollar figure — the sources summarize his findings and totals but the underlying spreadsheet‑level adjustments and discounting assumptions are not reproduced in the excerpts supplied here ^{[3] [2]}.

Conclusion: a judge’s remedial judgment turned into an appellate fight over methodology

Engoron’s calculation followed two basic steps — quantify ill‑gotten gains tied to overstated asset values and then tack on pre‑judgment interest at 9% — producing a disgorgement principal around $355 million and a total judgment in the mid‑hundreds of millions, but appellate judges later rejected the monetary remedy as excessive even while largely upholding the underlying fraud determination, leaving the precise accounting methodology and ultimate financial consequences to further litigation ^{[1] [3] [4] [6]}.