(Trends Wide) — New York Attorney General Letitia James’s office says it needs testimony from former President Donald Trump and two of his adult children to determine their knowledge of what investigators say they have identified as numerous “misleading statements and omissions” in the reports. tax filings and financial statements used to obtain loans.
In a court filing Tuesday night, investigators stated that the office “intends to make a final determination as to who is responsible for those misstatements and omissions.” He added that the attorney general’s office (OAG) “requires the testimony and evidence sought in this document to determine which employees and affiliates of the Trump Organization — and what other entities and individuals — may have aided the Trump Organization and Mr. Trump to make, or may have relevant knowledge about, the misstatements and omissions in question.”
They write that “witnesses closest to the top of the Trump Organization have asserted their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. Some others have professed faulty memory or claimed they were following instructions from higher-ranking employees.”
“But Mr. Trump’s actual knowledge of — and intent to commit — the numerous misstatements and omissions made by or on his behalf are essential components to resolving the OAG investigation in a proper and fair manner,” it says. the presentation. “Likewise, Donald Trump, Jr. and Ivanka Trump worked as agents for Mr. Trump, acted on their own behalf, and supervised others in connection with the transactions at issue herein; their testimony is also necessary for the proper resolution of the investigation.” of the OAG”.
Trends Wide has reached out to the Trump Organization and representatives for the Trumps for comment.
Ivanka Trump was a key liaison with Deutsche Bank, while Donald Trump Jr. was involved in several properties, including the one at 40 Wall Street, and certified the accuracy of financial statements as of 2017, the office said. of the attorney general.
In lengthy court documents, investigators said that about a dozen current and former Trump Organization employees have testified and that Trump personally authorized the production of their tax returns.
“In light of the widespread and repeated nature of the misstatements and omissions, it appears that the valuations in the Statements were generally inflated as part of a pattern to suggest that Mr. Trump’s net worth was higher than it otherwise would have been.” similar,” the researchers wrote.
They added that when Eric Trump and Allen Weisselberg, the former chief financial officer, testified in 2020, they both asserted their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in response to more than 500 questions each.
Specifically, the New York attorney general’s office said it is zeroing in on several specific alleged misstatements, including:
The size of the Trump Tower penthouse; misclassification of assets outside the control of Trump or the Trump Organization as “cash,” thereby overstating their liquidity; the process by which Trump or his associates arrived at valuations, including deviations from generally accepted accounting principles in ways the states did not disclose; did not use fundamental valuation techniques, such as discounting future income and expenses to their present value, or choosing as “comparable” only similar properties for the purpose of imputing valuations from public sales data; misrepresented the alleged involvement of “outside professionals” in arriving at the valuations, and failed to report that certain valuation amounts were inflated by an undisclosed amount of brand value.
One claim from James’ office is that Trump has not complied with subpoenas for the searches. As an example, they allege that while Trump did not use email, they learned from witnesses that Trump kept paper copies of documents and used sticky notes to communicate with employees. They said a file cabinet related to Trump’s records was never searched to comply with a subpoena.
“This file was never searched because the Trump Organization improbably determined that Mr. Trump was not involved in the preparation of his own financial statements,” they wrote.
James’ office said the alleged misleading statements were shared with lenders, with insurers claiming “virtually all of the profits from the misleading valuations accrued to Donald J Trump.” The office also said it has evidence indicating that Trump may have obtained more than $5 million in federal tax benefits from allegedly misleading valuations obtained from tax benefits taken at the family compound in New York, known as Seven Springs, and the Trump National Golf Course in Los Angeles.
James’ office has been conducting a civil investigation into the Trump Organization and the accuracy of its financial statements since 2019, in what Trump has called a political witch hunt.
The former president sued James alleging she violated his constitutional rights and asked a judge to issue a preliminary injunction blocking the investigation or removing him from it.
James’ office subpoenaed Trump and their adult children to testify in December, prompting Trump’s attorneys to move earlier this month to quash the subpoenas, arguing that the attorney general, whose office is conducting an investigation and whose lawyers have joined a criminal investigation led by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office (DANY), was trying to “evade the entire grand jury process.”
A deposition in the civil case, they wrote, “is effectively the same as a DANY deposition, but without providing the constitutional protections afforded to all witnesses through the grand jury process.”
Witnesses called before a New York State grand jury are granted immunity from liability for their testimony and cannot be prosecuted unless they lie under oath. James, they argued, is trying to circumvent those rights by seeking testimony in a civil case, which could then be used by criminal prosecutors. If they don’t testify, in a civil case a jury can hold that against the defendants or draw an adverse inference.
In Tuesday’s filing, attorneys for James rejected the argument, arguing that the Trumps could assert their Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.
“Each witness is free to invoke his or her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. The exercise of that right by a witness in a civil investigation (or any other civil or administrative proceeding) is neither uncommon nor a denial of a constitutional right “the lawyers wrote.