New York Attorney General Letitia James has responded to attempts by Donald Trump and the adult children of his first marriage to defy subpoenas in her investigation of the Trump Organization’s financial practices, and she did not come to play. The new filings provide the most detailed view yet of an investigation that has happened mainly without public showboating or extensive leaks.
In two lengthy documents—one explaining why the Trumps should be legally compelled to testify and another detailing relevant facts uncovered by the investigation to date—James lays out the evidence for the Trump Organization having used “fraudulent or misleading” asset valuations to maneuver for the best possible loans or tax assessments, and the specific involvement of Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Ivanka Trump. Eric Trump has already been deposed in the investigation after his efforts to refuse failed.
For each of the Trumps in question, the attorney general’s filings detail a series of documents they signed, and phone calls or meetings in which they participated, during which misleading or fraudulent valuations were attached to properties, loans were lobbied for, or tax benefits were obtained. Their testimony is therefore relevant to a legitimate investigation, the documents show—not the politically motivated “witch hunt” the Trumps have alleged in their efforts to avoid testifying.
But the really fun stuff comes in the supplemental verified petition laying out some of the factual basis for the investigation. A lot of it is creative bookkeeping—and some of it is close to home. Trump inflated the size and worth of his own apartment in Trump Tower. The apartment is an imposing 10,996 square feet, but that wasn’t enough for Trump, who claimed it was 30,000 square feet, and reported its value on that basis in official documents. Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, conceded that this inflated the property’s value by $200 million, “give or take.”
Trust Donald Trump to lie about how big his house is. It stands to reason, though. We already knew he lies about the size of everything else.
The Trumps also repeatedly offered financial valuations for Trump and his company and then separate estimates of the brand value of the Trump name … without admitting that the financial valuation that was not supposed to include brand value actually did include it. That inflated what was supposed to be a straightforward assessment of how much his properties were worth, and then added a separate statement about the brand value that had already been included, double counting the most nebulous and questionable part of the value to begin with.
Between 2004 and 2014, Trump’s claims about the worth of his Seven Springs property rose from $80 million to $291 million, an inflation that “includes the full amount that would be generated from the sale of the non-existent homes without taking into account the years it would take to construct infrastructure, build homes, obtain necessary approvals, and sell the number of homes identified in the supporting data.”
Valuations for Trump’s Westchester golf club were done on the basis of a specific number of memberships being sold with a $150,000 initiation fee—even as memberships were being sold with no initiation fee.
It goes on, for more than 100 pages of evidence filed to show why the attorney general’s office should be allowed to compel the Trumps to testify, thereby potentially getting more evidence. This isn’t just for Donald Trump bragging about his own inflated worth in magazine interviews. It’s information his company prepared for the purpose of getting loans, insuring properties, and getting tax benefits. Trump can lie about his net worth all he wants to reporters, but when he does it in official documents for the purposes of getting financial benefit, that’s where it can cause problems. Letitia James is not playing around, and these filings show she already has a lot to work with—but that doesn’t mean that Donald, Don Jr., and Ivanka get to evade testimony.
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