New York Attorney General Letitia James has investigated former President Donald Trump for a while. She knew about his dubious financial dealings, so she devised an idea. Without a trial, James asked a judge to find that the twice-impeached former President had fraudulently overvalued his assets. James feels that her evidence is so compelling that she thinks she'll get a guilty verdict without even a trial.
James sued Trump before he was indicted four times, saying that for years the former President, his business, and members of his family had fraudulently overvalued their assets by billions of dollars. I'm sure you've heard about Trump's dubious practices in overvaluing his properties.
The New York Times reports:
Before any of those criminal trials will take place, Mr. Trump is scheduled for a civil trial in New York in October. During the trial, the attorney general, Letitia James, will seek to bar him and three of his children from leading their family business, the Trump Organization, and to require him to pay a fine of around $250 million.
On Wednesday, Ms. James fired an opening salvo, arguing that a trial is not necessary to find that Mr. Trump and the other defendants inflated the value of their assets in annual financial statements, fraudulently obtaining favorable loans and insurance arrangements.
The fraud was so pervasive, she said in a court filing, that Mr. Trump had falsely boosted his net worth by between $812 million and $2.2 billion each year over the course of a decade.
"Based on the undisputed evidence, no trial is required for the court to determine that defendants presented grossly and materially inflated asset values," the filing said.
And she has the receipts:
Ms. James's lawsuit disputes the value of some of Mr. Trump's best-known properties, including Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate, and Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan. In her new filing, she wrote that, given the way that the worth of Trump Tower was calculated in 2018, it was overvalued by nearly $175 million. The following year, she said, the value of the building was falsely boosted by nearly $323 million.
Trump's attorneys want the case thrown out, but James says that Trump's financial statements were fraudulent. That's a game-changer. Judge Arthur F. Engoron is scheduled to hold a hearing in late September and could rule then.
