In the months leading up to the 2024 election, Donald Trump and his business empire faced a financial reckoning that threatened to hit the twice-impeached former president hard as he stared down several criminal indictments.
A devastating judgment in a sprawling civil fraud case pierced the heart of a decades-old narrative Trump has used to both boost his national profile and attract investments into his up-and-down real estate and branding enterprise. Trump still owes more than half a billion dollars, with growing interest, in the wake of that ruling.
