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Kathy Hochul's Damage Control After Trump Verdict Doesn't Look Like It Will Work

Leah Barkoukis
Leah Barkoukis  |  February 20, 2024 8:00 AM

While the progressive left cheered the $355 million judgment against former President Donald Trump in the real estate fraud case, which also barred him from doing business in New York for three years, others were rightly horrified. Law professor Jonathan Turley noted that after “this type of corporate public execution, it is hard to imagine many businesses rushing to the Big Apple. Drawing new businesses to the city is going to be about as easy as selling country estates during the French Revolution.” Sensing that, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul went into damage control mode. 

“I think that this is really an extraordinary, unusual circumstance that the law-abiding and rule-following New Yorkers who are business people have nothing to worry about, because they’re very different than Donald Trump and his behavior,” Hochul told radio host John Catsimatidis on “The Cats Roundtable” when pressed about how, if that could happen to a former president, it could happen to anyone. 

But it looks like those at the top of their game aren’t buying her spin. 

“Shark Tank” investor Kevin O’Leary blasted the state and vowed to never invest there again.

“It was already on the top of the list of being a loser state,” the chairman of O’Leary Ventures said Monday during an interview with Fox Business, referring to high taxes and regulation. “I would never invest in New York now. And I’m not the only person saying that.” 

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O’Leary said he couldn’t wrap his head around the judgment.

“This award, I mean, just leaving the whole Trump thing out of it and seeing what occurred here … And I’m no different than any other investor, I’m shocked at this,” he said. “I can’t even understand or fathom the decision at all. There’s no rationale for it.”