Trumps Legal Troubles spread in the Jan. 6 Probe and into New York State

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WASHINGTON

Former President Donald Trump’s legal problems intensified on Wednesday, as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled he could not use executive privilege to protect hundreds of pages of documents related to the January attack. 6, 2021, to the U.S. Capitol from a congressional committee investigating the cause.

The decision, released by the court early Wednesday night, came less than a day after the New York attorney general moved to force Trump and two of his children to testify and produce documents in a fraud investigation. .

The Supreme Court’s decision upheld a low-level court decision that rejected Trump’s claim that executive privilege protects more than 700 pages of White House documents currently held by the National Archives.

According to a filing made by the archives, the trove of documents includes presidential diaries, notes of visitors to the White House, a draft executive order on the integrity of the election, handwritten notes from then White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, and briefing material produced for former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany.

The select committee is investigating the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob aimed at disrupting the counting of election votes from the 2020 presidential election. The committee is investigating whether and to what extent Trump himself was responsible for inciting the attack, linked to his false statement that the election was stolen from him.

The former president has also been criticized for being slow in calling on rioters to disperse, and members of his administration have been blamed for waiting too long to send National Guard troops to assist Capitol Police officers and of Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police. Department.

The documents now available to the select committee could shed light on the thinking of the former president and his aides during the attack and in the hours that followed.

New York AG alleges fraud

In a court filing late Tuesday, lawyers in the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James released a 115-page filing with the New York Supreme Court seeking a decision that Trump and two of his sons, Donald J. Trump Jr., and Ivanka Trump, are required to deliver sworn testimony about how the Trump Organization reported the value of its various assets when dealing with financial institutions, tax authorities and other third parties.

What the state argues is that the Trump Organization systematically miscalculated the value of its various assets in various official documents, for example, by lowering their estimates when calculating its tax bill and excessive these are stated when seeking loans from banks.

New York state law allows the attorney general to bring a fraud trial [w]ever any person will commit repeated fraud or illegal activities or otherwise. In the filing, the office said it discovered, separate and distinctly fraudulent or illegal activities that affected more than one individual.

Delay tactics

The Trump Organization, which owns several golf resorts, apartment and office buildings, and other real estate, is resisting the court investigation. Last month, Trump filed a lawsuit against James, alleging his investigation into his company was a form of political harassment. James, a Democrat, was elected to his position after a campaign in which he vowed to pursue legal action against Trump and his company.

In a statement, Alan Futerfas, an attorney representing Donald J. Trump Jr. said. and Ivanka Trump, “In the 160-page legal briefing, the Attorney Generals Office deliberately failed to address Ms. Jamess’s repeated threats to target the Trump family and her statements about her criminal investigation that all is the essence of our motion to repeal the subpoenas or keep them. “

For his part, James defined Trump’s resistance as an effort to delay the inevitable.

For more than two years, the Trump Organization has used delay and litigation tactics in an attempt to block a legitimate investigation into its financial dealings, James said in a statement released Tuesday night.

So far in our investigation, we have uncovered significant evidence suggesting Donald J. Trump and the Trump Organization erroneously and deceptively valuing multiple assets and misrepresenting those amounts to financial institutions for long-term. economic benefits, James said. Trumps must comply with our legal subpoenas for documents and testimony because no one in this country can pick and choose if and how the law applies to them. We will not be deterred in our efforts to continue this investigation and ensure no one is above the law.

False statements have been cataloged

The filing from the attorney generals ’office lists numerous instances in which the Trump Organization provided information to counterparts on various transactions that were not equivalent to other data sources. It also states that despite testimony from the company’s chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, that Trump kept paper records of his financial dealings in his Manhattan office, none of those documents was given to the investigators.

Miriam Baer, ​​the centennial professor of law at Brooklyn Law School, said the filing from the attorney generals ’office was more detailed than might be necessary to persuade the court to force testimony from the former president. Baer said that suggests James meant it could draw attention not only in court but in the media.

It was a very well laid out offering. It’s very straightforward and it makes a lot of sense, Baer told VOA. This is how you can get a court to issue a type of decision that will force you to comply with a subpoena. So it’s both necessary filing and also, in some ways, it does more work for the attorney general, in the sense that it clearly speaks to other audiences.

I would have wondered if [James] lost this motion, Danya Perry, a founding partner of law firm Perry Guha and a former deputy attorney general of New York and federal prosecutor, told VOA. It was a strong, powerful case he presented.

Perry said that even if a judge compels testimony, the attorney general may not benefit much from it. Weisselberg and Eric Trump, another of Trump’s children, have been dismissed from the case, and each has claimed his constitutional right against self-incrimination more than 500 times.

However, Perry said, James made a strong case for forcing the Trump Organization to turn over any documents related to the case.

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