The New York Attorney General’s Office has “uncovered significant evidence” that former President Donald Trump routinely inflated the value of his assets in an attempt to secure favorable terms from lenders and other financial institutions, according to court documents filed Monday night.
NY AG Letitia James told a judge that Trump’s bid to avoid a deposition in her ongoing investigation into his financial dealings should be blocked. Bloomberg reports:
“The investigation has uncovered significant evidence potentially indicating that, for more than a decade, these financial statements relied on misleading asset valuations and other misrepresentations to secure economic benefits,” James said in the filing. The depositions are necessary to determine if fraud occurred “and who may be responsible for any such fraud,” she added.
CNBC provides additional details:
The attorney general has said she is conducting both a civil investigation and a criminal probe related to the company.
“Mr. Trump personally certified the accuracy of the Statements for the years prior to 2016, at which point his assets were placed in a revocable trust,” while Donald Jr. “was responsible for the Statements for the years 2016 to 2020,” James noted in the filing.
That document said that from 2012 through 2016, the company’s financial statements said that Trump’s triplex apartment in Trump Tower in Manhattan “exceeded 30,000 square and valued the apartment at up to $327 million based on those dimensions,” the filing noted.
But in 2017, the company’s statement “slashed the apartment’s value by two-thirds, sizing the residence at just under 11,000 square fees,” which is the figure specified in the offering plan for the building, the filing said.
That year was also Trump’s first year as president of the United States.
Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg admitted to prosecutors last year that valuation of Trump’s triplex was overstated by ‘give or take’ $200 million, according to James’ filing. Weisselberg was indicted on a number of charges related to tax avoidance.
In asking a judge to force Trump to sit for a deposition, James explained that only a handful of documents she obtained from the Trump Organization came from the former president. Business Insider explains:
That lack of words on paper only makes his spoken testimony more vital, James argues in Monday night’s filing with an appellate court in Manhattan — the latest volley in the AG’s three year probe into The Trump Organization.
At a Manhattan Supreme Court hearing earlier Monday, lawyers for James had also decried the lack of personal paperwork from Trump.
Out of some 900,000 documents turned over to James office by the Trump Organization so far, only 10 came from the former president’s personal or “custodial” files, a lawyer from James’ office revealed at the hearing.
James said the Trump Organization has not adequately searched Trump’s files for relevant documents, only underscoring the need for direct testimony.
