Donald Trump sues New York AG Letitia James after she sued him for $250M
Brittainy Newman/AP
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On Wednesday, former president Donald Trump requested that his revocable trust be protected from the $250 million civil action that New York Attorney General Letitia James has brought against Trump and his family.
The former president accused James of making repeated “attempts to steal, destroy, or control all things Trump,” including the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, which houses his private estate plan, and of “intimidation and harassment” in a 41-page civil lawsuit replete with the usual complaints.
The lawsuit said the trust “requires protection from James’ demand to invade his privacy.” As part of her lawsuit, James has sought documents about the trust, its terms and its contents.
“These are private matters to President Trump, and under Florida law, revelation of a settlor’s revocable trust while the settlor is still alive threatens the settlor’s right to privacy guaranteed by Article I, Section 23 of the Florida Constitution and the common law,” Trump’s lawsuit states.
On Wednesday evening, James’ spokesperson released the following statement: “No amount of lawsuits will stop us from pursuing this fraud, since numerous judges have rejected Donald Trump’s pointless attempts to dodge justice. Due to Donald Trump’s vast financial malfeasance, we filed a lawsuit. That truth hasn’t changed, and neither will our determination to uphold the principle that no one is above the law, regardless of their position in society or level of authority.”
James’ lawsuit accuses the Trumps of “grossly” inflating the former president’s net worth by billions of dollars and defrauding lenders and other parties with false and misleading financial statements over a 20-year period. James claims that Trump and his family have enriched themselves through “numerous acts of fraud and misrepresentations.”
A $250 million judgement and a ban on any Trump family member managing a business in the state of New York are the goals of the civil complaint, which was filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan.
Hours before a hearing in New York on Thursday when a judge will hear oral arguments over the attorney general’s request for a preliminary injunction to halt alleged ongoing fraud, Trump filed a document.
In a court filing made last month, the attorney general’s office argued that the Trump Organization looked to be relocating assets and taking other actions to restructure the company in an effort to “evade liability.”
James also requested that a monitor be appointed by the court to check the Trump Organization’s financial statements for accuracy.
Trump frequently referred to his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination during a deposition last month. The lawsuit contains multiple occasions in which Trump used the Fifth Amendment in response to questions about how the business determined the worth of particular properties. Jurors in a civil trial could infer that Trump’s refusal to answer was a bad thing.
The investigation by the attorney general was launched in March 2019, following testimony before Congress from Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, who claimed that the president had inflated the values of his assets in his annual financial statements to secure favourable loan and insurance terms and to lower real estate taxes.
James estimated that Trump placed a $327 million value on his unit in the Trump Tower. She added that the exorbitant price was based on inflated square footage despite Trump being aware that the property wasn’t that huge. “No apartment in New York City has ever sold for that amount,” she stated.
In addition, the lawsuit claimed that in a 2012 statement, rent-stabilized apartments in the Trump Park Avenue building were evaluated as though they could be rented for market rate. As a result, the lawsuit claims that units with a combined value of $750,000 were actually worth close to $50 million.
The Scottish golf club Trump Turnberry was worth close to $127 million, but the lawsuit claimed that since it opened in 2017, the golf property had seen yearly losses.
The golf course should have been valued at significantly less, according to the attorney general’s lawsuit, and utilising values between $123 million and $126.8 million based on using the Fixed Asset Scheme is therefore materially false and misleading.
The examples I provided, according to James, “barely scrape the surface.” “The art of the trade does not involve pretending to have money when you do not. The art of stealing is involved.”
The lawsuit claimed that Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization received a sizable financial benefit from these false and deceptive submissions.