NEW YORK — New York Attorney General Letitia James announced a bombshell $250 million civil fraud lawsuit Wednesday against former president Donald Trump, his adult children and his company.
The AG’s lawsuit to be filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan accuses the Trump Organization and top company executives of purposely misrepresenting the value of assets emblazoned with the former president’s name including skyscrapers, mansions, and golf courses by hundreds of millions of dollars over decades to enrich itself.
The suit seeks to remove Trump and his children from their roles with the eponymous organization after he “falsely inflated his net worth” in order to enrich themselves through “numerous acts of fraud and misrepresentations.”
Trump and the Trump Organization used false and misleading statements “repeatedly and persistently” to induce banks to lend money on favorable terms, per the lawsuit.
“Donald Trump falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to unjustly enrich himself, and cheat the system, thereby cheating all of us,” James said at a press conference Wednesday.
James added that her office is making criminal referrals against Trump and his kids on top of the $250 million civil suit, which seeks to bar Trump, his kids and his company from partaking in any commercial real estate transactions in New York and would also bar Trump and his business from seeking loans from banking institutions registered in the state for five years.
The lawsuit surfaces from a three-year civil investigation by James’ office into allegations of widespread fraud at the company and names the former commander-in-chief as well as his children, Ivanka, Eric and Don Jr. and other company executives as defendants.
The AG’s office deposed Trump and his son, Eric, in the probe, with both invoking their right to stay silent hundreds of times under questioning. During the investigation, Trump was also held in civil contempt and fined $110,000 for failing to meet evidence deadlines.
The lawsuit represents the latest legal setback faced by the former president and a resounding blow. If James’ case succeeds, it could sound the death knell for Trump’s namesake company in his home state — where his grandmother founded it with his father almost 100 years ago.
In a parallel criminal case, the Trump Organization and Trump Payroll Corp. are headed to trial next month in Manhattan on tax evasion and fraud charges. The company’s longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, pleaded guilty in that case in August, admitting to engaging in a 15-year scheme with the company and agreeing to testify against it at trial in exchange for less prison time. James’ office has aided the Manhattan district attorney investigators trying the Trump Org case.
James has scrutinized Trump Organization assets in her investigation, including a sprawling estate in Westchester County, a Trump Tower tri-plex on Fifth Ave., a golf course in Scotland, Trump Park Ave., the 70-story skyscraper at 40 Wall St., Trump International Hotel and Tower Chicago, as well as the Trump National Golf Club in Los Angeles.
On Wednesday, James said she was “only scratching the surface” as she detailed scheme after scheme related to inflating the value of Trump-owned properties across the country.
Among them, Trump’s Florida resort Mar-a-Lago, which the ex-prez valued at nearly 10-times its actual worth.
“The club generated annual revenues of less than $25 million and should have been valued at about $75 million,” James said. “However, Mar a Lago was valued as high as $739 million.”
Trump and his company also “routinely ignored legal restrictions on development rights and marketability,” according to the suit. The former “Apprentice” host even exaggerated the size of his penthouse apartment atop Trump Tower in Midtown, reporting it to be around 30,000-square-feet when in actuality the tri-plex is only 11,000-square-feet, James said.
The Trump family business was incorporated as a real estate development company in the 1920s by Trump’s German immigrant grandmother, Elizabeth, and her young son, Fred Trump, Donald’s father. Fred would go on to become one of New York City’s biggest landlords and amass a fortune building middle-class housing in Brooklyn and Queens.
The Justice Department sued the Trump company around the time Trump took over as president in his twenties for refusing to rent any of its 15,000 units to Black and Puerto Rican people. The suit resulted in a 1975 settlement with the feds requiring then-named Trump Management Inc. to give nonwhite tenants the chance to rent vacancies.
In 2016, when Trump became president, he handed the reins to his three eldest children and Weisselberg, placing his stake in a revocable trust controlled by his sons.
Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
James, meanwhile, took a page out of Trump’s book as she hammered the 76-year-old over the allegations.
“Claiming you have money you do not have does not amount to the art of the deal, it’s the art of the steal,” she said. “No one, no one, is above the law.”
____
