Trump Could Be Trying To Shift His Assets, AG Claims In Injunction Request
As part of her office's civil fraud lawsuit against former President Donald Trump, his eldest children and their real estate business, New York State Attorney General Letitia James has asked a state judge for an injunction to prevent any future asset sales and to appoint an independent monitor to oversee the business.
In an affidavit accompanying the injunction request, filed Thursday morning in New York State Supreme Court, an attorney in the Office of the Attorney General wrote that “the Trump Organization may be taking steps to reorganize its business outside of New York.”
“Since we filed our lawsuit, Donald Trump and the Trump Organization have continued to engage in fraudulent business practices,” James wrote on Twitter. “We will not allow Donald Trump and the Trump Organization to continue this fraud or evade accountability. No one is above the law.”
The Trump Organization has already sold its lease on the hotel it developed in the Old Post Office building in D.C. — one of the assets that was a focus of the investigation — and has refinanced a loan on his Florida golf course, Doral, the AG wrote in the filing. Trump sold the lease on the D.C. hotel, which served as a sort of lobbyist home base during his presidency, to an investor group including former baseball star Alex Rodriguez for $375M. It has since reopened as a Waldorf Astoria.
The AG’s office also said in the filing that, as it brought the $250M fraud suit against Trump last month, the former president’s company “registered with the New York Department of State a foreign limited liability company under the name 'The Trump Organization II LLC,' which was formed less than a week earlier in Delaware.”
The AG reached out to the Trump Organization’s legal counsel on Sept. 30 seeking assurance that the company wasn’t reorganizing to make prosecution difficult and confirmation of a proposed trial date, OAG attorney Colleen Faherty wrote in the affidavit.
Counsel for the Trump Organization initially declined to offer assurance over restructuring claims, and failed to respond to the proposed trial date until Wednesday, when Trump's counsel offered to “provide ‘assurance’ and/or ‘reasonable advance notice’ to address any of your purported concerns regarding the activities of the Defendants” without any proposed actions, Faherty wrote.
The fraud suit, filed on Sept. 21, names the former president, Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump as defendants, along with Allen Weisselberg, Jeffrey McConney, The Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, The Trump Organization Inc., and other firms associated with Trump.
In a September press conference unveiling the suit, James said that the AG’s office had found 200 examples of the Trumps misvaluing assets to score better loans from banks and avoid taxes.
The AG has requested that the courts ban the Trumps from working in New York real estate for five years, a permanent ban on the Trumps serving as officers or directors of New York businesses, and is seeking at least $250M in restitution.
