New York sues Donald Trump, company and family members over widespread fraud claims, seeks at least $250 million in penalties
The suit says that Trump’s personal financial statements “for the period 2011 through 2021 were fraudulent and misleading in both their composition and presentation.”
James said that Trump had falsely claimed that his apartment in Manhattan was more than triple its actual size as part of the alleged fraud.
And the suit says Trump valued his Mar-a-Lago club property in Palm Beach, Florida, on the false premise that it sat on unrestricted property and could be developed for residential use, even though he allegedly knew that asset was subject to a slew of tight restrictions.
Mar-a-Lago “generated less than $25 million in annual revenue,” James said. “It should have been valued at about $75 million, but it was valued at $739 million.”
The suit says that despite claims to the contrary by the Trump Organization to third parties, no professionals outside the company were retained to prepare statements of Trump’s financial condition. Those statements included claims about the value of various real estate assets that were used to obtain loans and insurance coverage.
“To the extent Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization received any advice from outside professionals that had any bearing on how to approach valuing the assets, they routinely ignored or contradicted such advice,” the suit said.
James pointed to a Manhattan property listed in the lawsuit, 40 Wall St., as an example of that.
She said that the Trump Organization and Trump received appraisals from a bank calculating the value of that property at $200 million as of Aug. 1, 2010, and $220 million as of November 1, 2012.
But in Trump’s 2011 Statement of Financial Condition, 40 Wall St. was listed as having a value of $524 million. That valuation then increased to $527 million in Trump’s 2012 statement and to $530 million in the 2013 statement, or “more than twice the value calculated by the ‘professionals,'” the suit said
In addition to the Trumps, the defendants in the suit include Allen Weisselberg, who acted for years as chief financial officer of the Trump Organization.
Both Weisselberg and the Trump Organization were criminally charged last year by the Manhattan district attorney’s office for an alleged scheme to avoid paying taxes on portions of the compensation given to company executives, among them Weisselberg.
Other defendants in the suit include Weisselberg’s lieutenant, Jeffrey McConney, as well as several Trump companies, among them ones that own properties in Manhattan, Westchester County, New York, Washington, D.C., and Chicago.
The seven-count suit alleges persistent and repeated fraud; falsifying business records; conspiracy to falsify business records; issuing false financial statements; conspiracy to falsify false financial statements; insurance fraud; and conspiracy to commit insurance fraud.
A spokesman for the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment on James’ criminal referral about Trump to that office.
Trump for years has blasted James for investigating his business, saying the Democratic attorney general was motivated by political animus against a Republican former president.