NY AG Letitia James sues Donald Trump for fraud, seeks a $250 million judgment

Out of all of the lawsuits, criminal investigations, impeachments, civil investigations, depositions, congressional hearings and journalistic investigations into Donald Trump, the one I’ve followed the least is the NY Attorney General’s investigation into Trump Org, the actual New York-based business. Trump Org is a complicated web involving real estate, golf courses, hotels and Trump’s personal assets. And everything is corrupt, from top to bottom. New York AG Letitia James held a press conference on Wednesday announcing the civil charges against Donald Trump and his adult children (except for poor Tiffany). AG James has already handed off her investigation to criminal prosecutors and the IRS, so prison may be on the table eventually, but not immediately. The immediate concern for the Trumps is that they’re not going to be able to borrow any money from legitimate banks and they’re going to have a hell of a time paying back their loans (which are reportedly in the range of hundreds of millions of dollars). Trump Org is likely to be dismantled in some substantial way too.

For 20 years, Donald Trump and his family enriched themselves through “numerous acts of fraud and misrepresentations,” New York Attorney General Letitia James alleges in a new lawsuit that accuses the Trumps of “grossly” inflating the former president’s net worth by billions of dollars and cheating lenders and others with false and misleading financial statements.

The civil lawsuit, filed Wednesday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, seeks a $250 million judgment and a prohibition on any of the Trumps leading a company in the state of New York.

“We found that Mr, Trump, his children, and the corporation used more than 200 false asset valuations over a ten year period,” James said at a press conference announcing the charges.

Among other allegations, the suit claims that the former president’s Florida estate and golf resort, Mar-a-Lago, was valued as high as $739 million, but should have been valued at around one-tenth that amount, at $75 million. The suit says that higher valuation was “based on the false premise that it was unrestricted property and could be developed for residential use even though Mr. Trump himself signed deeds donating his residential development rights and sharply restricting changes to the property.”

James is referring her findings to federal prosecutors in Manhattan, who could possibly open a criminal investigation into bank fraud, according to a footnote in the lawsuit.

Through “persistent and repeated business fraud,” the Trumps convinced banks to lend money to the Trump Organization on more favorable terms than deserved, according to the lawsuit, which named the former president, three of his adult children, the company, and two of its executives, Allan Weisselberg and Jeff McConney.

[From ABC News]

I’m including the video of AG James’s presser below. This investigation has felt, at times, like it was moving at a snail’s pace, but I’m impressed with how thoroughly AG James presents her case and her evidence. We knew that Allan Weisselberg had basically turned state’s evidence, as have several other people in the accounting/business side of Trump Org. James went about this methodically, building her case with not only witness testimony but the motherlode of receipts.

There’s a lot of talk about Melania Trump and whether she’ll finally divorce him. Please, she stayed with that diapered goat through all kinds of bullsh-t. She’s not going to pull the ripcord just yet, not when she’s so close to being his widow.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.

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