NEW YORK — Former President Donald Trump fled the Manhattan playground where he built his brand for the sunny climes of Florida in 2019. It turns out his hometown wasn’t finished with him.
New York and its legal system have eaten away at Mr. Trump’s finances and, potentially, his freedom this year as he runs for the White House for a third time.
Civil judgments in the defamation case of former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll and a sprawling fraud case against the Trump Organization have resulted in penalties exceeding a half-billion dollars, and 12 Manhattan jurors on Thursday made him the first former U.S. president convicted of a crime.
“I cherish New York, and the people of New York, and always will, but unfortunately, despite the fact that I pay millions of dollars in city, state and local taxes each year, I have been treated very badly by the political leaders of both the city and state,” Mr. Trump said in a social media post in November 2019 as he decamped for Florida.
In some ways, those parting words have become prophecy. Midtown construction workers and minorities in the Bronx gave Mr. Trump a hero’s welcome while Democratic officials threw the book at him in the courtroom.
Mr. Trump grew up in Queens and built his empire in Manhattan. Before his political rise, he was a tabloid darling in the 1980s and a reality TV star in the 2000s.
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Democratic officials’ eagerness to turn his long New York paper trail into lawsuits and an indictment transformed his old stomping ground into the epicenter of his legal woes as he takes on President Biden.
Other cases haven’t gone far:
• Special counsel Jack Smith’s case alleging Mr. Trump conspired against voters after the 2020 election is mired in Washington as the Supreme Court mulls whether Mr. Trump has presidential immunity against criminal charges.
• A second Smith case, in Florida, is stuck in neutral as a Trump-appointed judge slowly and carefully analyzes security concerns and legal issues around allegations that Mr. Trump unlawfully stored classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
• A case alleging Mr. Trump violated Georgia racketeering laws after the 2020 election stumbled out of the gate because Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was found to have had a romantic relationship with the man she hired to help lead the investigation, raising financial conflict concerns.
Ms. Carroll has successfully sued Mr. Trump twice in federal court over claims he defamed her after she publicly accused him of sexual assault in a New York department store in the 1990s. Mr. Trump denies the incident but faces nearly $90 million in judgments.
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New York Attorney General Letitia James persuaded a New York judge to find Mr. Trump and his business liable on claims he submitted fraudulent financial statements to gain favorable terms on loans and insurance. He faces more than $450 million in fines and interest, a judgment that could wipe out his cash stores if it is upheld.
The cases have forced Mr. Trump to fly from Florida and sleep at Trump Tower, his old domicile on Fifth Avenue. He held a post-conviction press conference Friday in the gilded lobby.
He railed against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg for making a top priority of getting Trump.
“We had a DA who is a failed DA. Crime is rampant in New York. Violent Crime. That’s what he’s really supposed to be looking at,” said Mr. Trump, noting a machete-wielding attacker at a Times Square McDonald’s. “Bragg is down watching [my] trial on what they call crimes?”
It’s unclear whether the Big Apple battering will hamstring Mr. Trump politically in the state. If anything, he seems to be on the upswing.
A new poll shows Mr. Trump trails Mr. Biden by only 7 percentage points in New York. Mr. Biden won the state by triple that margin in 2020. The Emerson College Polling/The Hill/PIX11 survey said independents who typically vote for Democrats have swung toward Mr. Trump.
The former president wasn’t as lucky in the courtroom, where he faced a jury drawn from Manhattan stocked with lawyers, an investment banker and others from professional classes who don’t make up Mr. Trump’s base.
Mr. Trump is no longer stuck in New York and can spend time at his Florida estate or campaign against Mr. Biden at his leisure, though he will be back in New York on July 11 for sentencing.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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