President Trump won a huge, symbolic victory Thursday when a New York appeals court threw out the more than $500 million fine he owed in Attorney General Letitia James’ business fraud case.

The Appellate Division, First Department, overturned the whopping $464 million judgment against Trump, 79, but upheld a finding that the real estate tycoon-turned-president engaged in fraud by exaggerating his net worth for decades.

“I had a victory today. You know, they stole $550 million from me with a fake case, and it was overturned,” Trump told dozens of law enforcement officers later Thursday during a visit related to his crime crackdown in Washington, DC.

But the case, stemming from a civil suit brought by James’ office, still remains in place and will now go to New York’s highest court as the legal battle between the state’s top lawyer and the commander in chief continues.

The 323-page decision included three separate opinions, but three of the five judges agreed the fine against Trump — which had grown to $515 million including interest — was “excessive.”

“While the injunctive relief ordered by the court is well crafted to curb defendants’ business culture, the court’s disgorgement order, which directs that defendants pay nearly half a billion dollars to the State of New York, is an excessive fine that violates the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution,” the main opinion by Judges Dianne T. Renwick and Peter H. Moulton read. 

Still, the five-judge panel kept in place a ban on Trump and his two eldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, from running a company in New York for several years. And the ruling kept in place an order for an outside monitor to oversee and file reports on the Trump Organization’s business dealings for three years.

Those parts of the ruling had been on hold while the appeal was decided. And Trump posted a $175 million bond in place of paying the entire judgment during the appeal process.

The interest and fines against everyone in the case — including Don Jr. and Eric, and other Trump Org. execs — have ballooned to over $527 million since the February 2024 ruling from Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron.

Thursday’s decision was a blow to James — whose office prosecuted Trump — and to Engoron, as at least two appellate judges found Engoron made “errors” in his rulings on the case.

James accused Trump and others of carrying out a “staggering fraud” by inflating his net worth by billions of dollars over a decade to get better loan and insurance terms. But the Republican commander-in-chief maintained his innocence, claiming that he was a target of the AG’s politically motivated prosecution.

Trump lauded the ruling in two lengthy posts on Truth Social, repeating claims that the case was a “political witch hunt.”

“TOTAL VICTORY in the FAKE New York State Attorney General Letitia James Case!,” Trump posted. “I greatly respect the fact that the Court had the Courage to throw out this unlawful and disgraceful Decision that was hurting Business all throughout New York State.”

James, in her own statement, glossed over the fact that the judgment was vacated, also playing the decision off as a victory.

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“The First Department today affirmed the well-supported finding of the trial court; Donald Trump, his company, and two of his children are liable for fraud.”

James said her office would appeal.

The five-judge panel was starkly divided on various issues. Two of the judges found James’ suit was valid and that she proved Trump committed fraud but felt the fine against him was too harsh.

One judge said Engoron made a mistake by ruling that Trump was liable for fraud before the bench trial.

Another judge, Justice David Friedman, said James didn’t have the authority to bring the case against Trump in the first place, noting the institutions that lent money to the president could have sued him if they felt aggrieved.

Friedman — who issued the most scathing opinion among the three against James and Engoron — said the trial judge wrongly sided with the AG on a range of issues, including by crediting the testimony of ex-con Michael Cohen and when he doled out sanctions against Trump’s lawyers for “playing the role they are supposed to.”

The fact Engoron hit Trump’s team with sanctions, “raises serious doubts about the trial court’s objectivity and impartiality in presiding over and adjudicating this action,” Friedman wrote in his dissent.

As for James, Friedman blasted: “Plainly, her ultimate goal was not ‘market hygiene’ … but political hygiene, ending with the derailment of President Trump’s political career and the destruction of his real estate business.

“The voters have obviously rendered a verdict on his political career. This bench today unanimously derails the effort to destroy his business.”

Since there wasn’t a majority reached in Thursday’s decision, the case can automatically qualify to be heard in the Empire State’s top court — the New York Court of Appeals.

Trump’s side can seek to put the non-monetary punitive measures, like the ban on him running the business, on hold again during further appeal, the panel said.

The appeal court’s decision came after a theatrical, 11-week trial that threatened to derail Trump’s image as a real estate tycoon — and brand him as a fraudster — as he campaigned to regain the White House.

Legal fail across board

President Trump, who faced a half-dozen court cases a little more than a year ago, now has the slate wiped almost completely clean:

• JANUARY 6

After the Supreme Court ruled in July 2024 that presidents enjoy broad immunity for their actions in office, special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution over the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot foundered — and he dropped it completely after the election.

9

• CLASSIFIED DOCS

The case against Trump taking classified documents to Mar-a-Lago after leaving office was dismissed after the Supreme Court ruling. Smith then dropped the appeal.

• ELECTION PLOT

Fulton County DA Fani Willis, who indicted Trump for racketeering in Georgia, was removed from the case over misconduct. It may never be picked back up.

• BUSINESS FRAUD

New York Attorney General Tish James scored a civil conviction against Trump for misstating the worth of his properties, but on Thursday an appeals court threw out the nearly $500 million fine, leaving only a slap on the wrist.

9

• ‘HUSH MONEY’

Trump was convicted in May 2024 for charges surrounding payments to Stormy Daniels. He is appealing the conviction (sought by DA Alvin Bragg,) though has been given an unconditional discharge, meaning he’s unlikely to face a penalty in the case. 

Trial evidence revealed that Trump secured cushy interest rates between 2011 and 2021 after goosing up the value of assets like his Big Apple penthouse and Mar-a-Lago estate on financial papers.

Trump’s business falsely claimed that his Trump Tower triplex was 30,000 square feet — rather than its true size of 11,000 square feet — and used the phony figures to pump up the pad’s value to $327 million in 2015 after claiming it was worth $80 million just four years earlier, evidence showed.

Trump also valued Mar-a-Lago at $517 million on a financial filing despite his own tax broker admitting to listing the palatial estate’s “market value” at just $27 million in 2020, a witness revealed.

“The frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience,” Engoron wrote in his ruling.

The case roiled the soon-to-be 47th president, who chose to leave the campaign trail for several days to attend the trial, calling the proceedings a “political witch hunt” and insisting that he did “nothing wrong.”

Engoron and James are both elected Democrats, and the AG campaigned on a promise to investigate Trump, calling the then-president a “con man” and ″carnival barker.”

Trump’s lawyers argued that the case had no “victims” and that “sophisticated” companies like Deutsche Bank did their own research before entering into the deals, and were all paid back in full.

But James’ office argued that Trump’s fudged financial filings were nonetheless harmful to the marketplace as a whole — and Engoron agreed.

“The next group of lenders to receive bogus statements might not be so lucky,” he wrote in his ruling.

Ed Martin, Trump’s political weaponization czar, called for James to step down as the Empire State’s top lawyer after he launched a probe into allegations that she committed mortgage fraud on a Brooklyn townhouse and a Virginia home.

Martin, the director of the Justice Department’s Weaponization Working Group, even showed up outside James’ multi-family residential property in Brooklyn last week.

“I’m just happy to be on a block looking at houses,” Martin told a Post reporter at the time. “I’m just looking at houses, interesting houses. It’s an important house.”

Trump faced four criminal cases, but appears to have gotten off unscathed in all of them, primarily because he landed back in the White House for another term and benefits again from presidential immunity.

Two federal cases, for his alleged role in the Jan. 6 Capitol Riot and for allegedly hoarding confidential documents at Mar-a-Lago, were both dropped by the Justice Department soon after he took office in January.

Trump was convicted in a “hush money” case in New York State court but he only received a slap on the wrist. He’s appealing that case.

And a Georgia election fraud case against him was derailed after Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was exposed for having an affair with the lead prosecutor she appointed to prosecute him. Willis was removed from the case and it’s been in limbo since.

The president is still fighting two civil jury verdicts in the lawsuits brought by writer E. Jean Carroll, accusing Trump of sexually abusing her one time in the 1990s and then defaming her repeatedly by denying her claims and calling her a liar. 

He is seeking to overturn an $83.3 million verdict in Carroll’s defamation suit. And he lost his bid to vacate a $5 million verdict in Carroll’s sexual abuse suit. He could still seek to have the US Supreme Court hear his appeal in the latter case.