4 Takeaways From NY Attorney General Filings on the Trump Organization

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The New York attorney general is investigating the Trump Organization’s financial dealings. The new court filings detail the AG’s office’s accusations against the company, including improperly increasing property values. The docs also highlight the extent of what the Trump Organization and family did to avoid collaboration. LoadingSomeone is loading.

New York Attorney General Letitia James took legal action Tuesday to force former President Donald Trump and two of his children to testify under oath in his office’s investigation into the Trump Organization’s financial dealings .

In a press release Tuesday, James announced action to enforce the subpoenas given to Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Ivanka Trump in December. The release includes related court filings of more than a hundred pages detailing some of the accusations against the Trump organization.

The year-long fraud investigation examines whether Trump’s real estate company has artificially increased or increased the values ​​of its assets for loan and tax benefits. Recent filings include the most specific accusations James has made against the Trump Organization to date.

The civil investigation is also taking place in conjunction with a separate criminal investigation into the Trump Organization conducted by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. James’ office is also cooperating in that separate investigation.

Trump has denied all wrongdoing and accused the investigations of being politically motivated.

Here are four main takeaways from the attorney general’s announcement and the accompanying documents.

The court filings outlined specific accusations of the Trump Organization engaging in ‘deceptive or deceptive’ practices

The attorney general’s office said in a statement that it has evidence indicating that “the Trump Organization used fraudulent or fraudulent asset valuations to obtain multiple economic benefits, including loans, insurance coverage, and tax deduction. “

The statement said the company submitted financial statements to the IRS, as well as lenders and insurers, that were “inaccurate or misleading compared to the supporting data and documentation the Trump Organization submitted to its accounting firm.”

The attorney general accused the Trump Organization of misrepresenting objective facts, mischaracterizing assets, and misrepresenting their valuation process, among other issues.

The statement outlined six properties that the attorney general says the organization lied to, including Trump’s property in Seven Springs in Bedford, New York; three of his properties in Manhattan; and two golf clubs.

On one occasion, the attorney general said the Trump Organization said an apartment was worth $ 25 million but then offered it to Ivanka Trump for $ 8 million.

Trump’s triplex apartment, located in New York City’s Trump Tower, was valued in financial statements as $ 327 million, based on its being 30,000 square feet, the files said. However the apartment is only a third of that size – about 10,996 square feet.

The attorney general also said the Trump Organization added a “brand premium” of 15 to 30% to boost the valuation of certain Trump-branded properties, a practice he called uncommon and wrong.

James’ office said the evidence they gathered made it clear that the investigation should continue, but they had not yet determined if there were grounds for legal action.

President-elect Donald Trump, Eric Trump, left, Ivanka Trump, and Donald Trump Jr., listen to a press conference at the Trump Tower in New York, NY on Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2017. Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images Trump’s children may also be implicated in fraud

James ’attempts to force Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Ivanka Trump to appear for sworn testimony indicate that the attorney general’s investigation has become a family affair.

In a press release on Tuesday, James said documents released this week clarified that all three individuals were “directly involved in one or more of the transactions under review.”

The filing states that both Donald Trump Jr. was involved. and Ivanka Trump for providing misleading financial information to institutions, while the former president has “ultimate authority over the Trump Organization’s extensive conduct involving false statements to counterparts, including financial institutions and Internal Revenue Services. “

Supervised by Donald Trump Jr. multiple financial statements containing fraudulent valuations since 2017, according to court documents. And until 2017, Ivanka Trump served as the organization’s primary contact for its largest lender, Deutsche Bank, where Ivanka “caused fraudulent financial statements to be submitted to” as well as the federal government, the federal government said. confrontation.

Trump’s other adult son, Eric Trump, who serves as the company’s vice president, was already subpoenaed to the investigation in late 2020 but requested the Fifth Amendment more than 500 times when they were fired in 2020. , James’ office said, according to court documents on Tuesday.

The Trump Organization and members of the Trump family have been largely uncooperative in the investigation so far

The release of the document on Tuesday night was partly motivated by Trump’s recent attempts to block the attorney general from questioning him and his two children, James ’office said. But the trove of new records suggests that the former president’s efforts to deny the investigation have been going on since the beginning.

“For more than two years, the Trump Organization has used delay and litigation tactics in an attempt to obstruct a legitimate investigation into its financial dealings,” James said in the press release.

According to filings Tuesday, the Trump Organization has been avoiding providing documents to James ’office for more than a year, citing the“ email transfer ”as a reason to postpone testimony from an executive in charge of handling conflict-of-interest rules.

In a letter filed in court and made public in court documents on Tuesday, the Trump Organization claimed that email transfers from 2019 were responsible for unsent attachments to Chief Compliance Counsel Jill Martin’s emails related to analysis of a Trump golf club in Los Angeles.

But the company’s avoidance is more than email snafus, according to court documents.

Of the five million documents the Trump Organization provided to James ’office in the two years since the attorney general’s office issued the subpoena, only three were actually made by Trump himself, who has been running the operation for decades. prior to his inauguration to the presidency in January 2017.

The three letters were made in July 2021, weeks after the organization’s Manhattan District Attorney’s Office case on tax evasion charges. The company has not produced any documents from Trump since then, according to court filings.

A taxi passes Trump Tower, the headquarters of the Trump Organization, in New York City on Wednesday, July 14, 2021 AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey The Trump Organization fires back

Following legal action on Tuesday, the Trump Organization responded Wednesday with a strong statement reflecting some of the former president’s past attacks against the attorney general.

“The only one misleading the public is Letitia James,” a company spokeswoman said in the statement. “He deceived New Yorkers by basing his entire candidacy on a promise to get Trump at all costs without seeing a single shred of evidence and by violating every conceivable rule of ethics. “

The response came a month after Trump filed his own lawsuit against James, accusing him of trying to “harass” him by investigations. At a rally in Arizona over the weekend, the former president played a supercut mockery of James, calling him an “unhinged liberal,” while also saying he didn’t know who he was.

“Three years later, he is now faced with the very fact that he has no case,” the Trump Organization continued in a statement Wednesday. “So, in response to Trump suing him and filing numerous ethical complaints, and on the heels of his failed governor race, he has no choice but to deceive the public again by misrepresenting the facts and ignoring the his own inflammatory comments. “

The spokesman added: “His allegations are baseless and will be vigorously defended.”

On Wednesday, Eric Trump tweeted a video montage of James chasing Trump when he was campaigning to become New York attorney general in 2018. Other Democrats in the race also campaigned to prosecute Trump.

“Letitia you can’t escape your own words,” she wrote on Twitter. “This is all window dressing for your abuse of office and ethical misconduct (which we are prosecuting you for).”

There is no evidence to suggest that James violated any state ethics laws during the investigation.

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