N.Y. AG: Trump Inflated Portfolio Value By More Than $2B
In the same week former President Donald Trump pleaded not guilty to interfering with the election in Georgia, New York Attorney General Letitia James asked a judge to eschew a trial and rule unilaterally that he and his company engaged in years-long fraud to manipulate the value of his real estate assets.
James argued in a recently unsealed filing that Trump falsely increased his net worth by between $812M and $2.2B every year for a decade, The New York Times reports.
She asked New York State Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron for summary judgment to bypass the trial, which is set for October, arguing it is not necessary to determine the fraud or its extent.
“Based on the undisputed evidence, no trial is required for the court to determine that defendants presented grossly and materially inflated asset values,” James wrote in the filing. “At the end of the day, this is a documents case.”
Lawyers for Trump argued that the entire case should be thrown out because of a recent ruling that they say set a precedent that would reduce the scope of the assets in question because of time limits.
James filed the civil fraud lawsuit against Trump and his three eldest children last September, alleging years of illegal behavior. She wants the court to ban the Trumps from working in New York real estate for five years, and has sought $250M in restitution. A month later, she accused the Trumps of trying to move their assets out of the state.
Engoron in November ordered an independent monitor be appointed to oversee the finances of the former president and his family business. If either side were successful in obtaining a ruling from the judge, per the Times, it could have major ramifications for the case.
James would have a much simpler path to victory were the judge to rule in her favor, but if Trump’s lawyer were to receive any change to the assets and loans in question, it would lower impact and any penalty determined at trial.
In her complaint last year, James said the alleged fraud took place over at least the years from 2011 through 2021 and that her office had uncovered 200 examples of the Trumps fraudulently misvaluing assets in order to score better loans from banks and to avoid paying taxes.
For example, James has alleged that Trump Tower was overvalued in 2018 by almost $175M. In 2019, its value was hiked up erroneously by almost $323M, she claimed. He claimed his three-story apartment in the building was nearly three times larger than it actually is and was worth more than $300M — tens of millions more than the most expensive condo ever sold in the city, per the suit.
In New York in April, Trump became the first former president to be charged with a felony, when he pleaded not guilty in a Manhattan courtroom to 34 felony counts connected to falsifying business records.
He was indicted in Florida regarding accusations he took classified documents when he left the White House, and has been indicted in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., for interfering with the peaceful transfer of power following the election in 2020. On Thursday, he pleaded not guilty to charges that he tried to illegally change the outcome of the election in Georgia.
