NEW YORK (AP) — New York’s Democratic attorney general asked a court Monday to enforce subpoenas into an investigation into whether President Donald Trump and his businesses inflated assets on financial statements.
Attorney General Letitia James filed a petition in state trial court in New York City naming the Trump Organization, an umbrella group for the Republican president’s holdings, as a respondent along with other business entities. The filing also named Eric Trump and Seven Springs, a New York estate owned by the Trump family.
The attorney general’s office is investigating whether the Trump Organization and the president improperly inflated the value of assets to secure loans and obtain economic and tax benefits. Investigators are looking into whether the Trump Organization and its agents improperly inflated the value of the Seven Springs north of the city.
In the court filings, the attorney general’s office wrote that “information regarding the valuation of Seven Springs is significant” to the office’s investigation.
Emails seeking comment were sent to lawyers for the Trump Organization and Eric Trump.
The investigation was launched in March 2019 after Trump’s longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen told Congress that Trump had inflated the value of his assets to obtain more favorable terms for loans and insurance coverage.
Since then, the attorney general’s office has issued “a number of subpoenas and has taken testimony seeking information material to these matters,” the court filing said. Investigators have not yet determined whether the law was broken.
James’ office issued subpoenas to the Trump Organization and to Seven Springs LLC in December 2019, seeking financial documents, the filing said. Since then, both have “engaged in extensive good-faith discussions concerning the Trump Organization’s compliance with the subpoenas.”
The attorney general’s office is also attempting to collect information about several other Trump-related properties, including the Trump National Golf Club in Los Angeles, the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago and an office building on Wall Street in Manhattan where the Trump Organization “owns a ‘ground lease’ pertaining to the property.”
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Hill reported from Albany, N.Y. Balsamo reported from Washington, D.C.
Best Infrastructure Week yet – and it’s only Monday!
I’m not in banking or real estate, but are you just allowed to declare, without any third-party appraisals or anything, what your various properties are worth? What kind of institution accepts that? “Uh, yeah, my building is like totally worth $50 million. Can I haz loan now?” I know if I waltzed into my bank and told them by $300,000 house was actually worth $500,000 so I should get a $300,000 HELOC, I would be shown the door.
How long before the ‘Nasty Woman’ comments start flying?
Taking bets…
James keeps moving up my list for AG. My guess is that Xavier Becerra (CA A.G.) gets it, but damn, she sure knows how to go after Trump…
The key to this is the records from Deutsche Bank, arguably the world’s most corrupt bank. When no other bank would touch him, Deutsche lent hundreds of millions to Bunker Boy. Records from Deutsch are the gold standard.