NEW YORK — What did he post and when did he post it?
A Manhattan judge on Friday wondered out loud whether former President Donald Trump has Post-It notes he’s not turning over as the state attorney general probes the 45th commander-in-chief’s business practices.
The comments from Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron came in response to a new affidavit by Trump swearing he doesn’t have access to documents that AG Letitia James first requested in December. Trump has been getting fined $10,000 every day he doesn’t turn over the papers since Engoron found him in civil contempt on Tuesday.
“He’s Donald Trump, the most famous real estate developer in the world, arguably,” an incredulous Engoron said at an impromptu video conference. “He runs an organization called The Trump Organization. I’m surprised that he doesn’t seem to have any documents.”
Trump denied having anything to give up.
“[If] there are any documents responsive to the subpoena, I believe they would be in the possession of custody of the Trump Organization,” he told the judge in the affidavit dated Wednesday.
But Engoron was unsatisfied with the brief note from the ex-president.
“I would have liked him to have said, ‘Here is where I keep my records. I have a personal file cabinet. I have an office file cabinet,’” the judge said. “He’s famous, I believe, for Post-Its. When he wants something done, he puts a Post-It on something. I don’t think we’ve received any Post-Its.”
James’ civil fraud probe is investigating whether Trump and his company executives lied about the value of Trump Organization properties to banks, lenders and the IRS — alternately overvaluing and undervaluing the buildings’ actual value to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
The AG’s office and Trump’s lawyers previously agreed to wait until Saturday for prosecutors to sue him over documents they are seeking. Those include notes and filing cabinets at Trump Tower in Manhattan and the ex-president’s Mar-a-Lago, Fla., home.
The battle may come down to Trump’s unusual communication style.
His former lawyer Michael Cohen told the Daily News that Trump used Post-It notes all the time, often affixing them to printed-out business emails.
A photo of one that Cohen shared with The News shows a Sharpie-written note in the ex-president’s infamous handwriting stuck on a performance review form for students at the now-defunct Trump University. “Michael C. Please give to press,” reads the missive.
“I was the first phone call in the morning and his last phone call at night for over a decade,” Cohen said of his former relationship with Trump. “No one knew him better. No one knew him or knows him better than I.”
On Friday, Trump lawyer Alina Habba had several tense exchanges with lawyers for the AG, who were seen rolling their eyes and facing their webcams with their heads in their hands.
Habba said the “Post-It thing” was “actually comical” and that Trump has no documents left to give the AG.
“It’s not fair to my client,” Habba said. “I’m asking you to please remove the fine.”
But Engoron turned down Habba’s motion to remove the contempt order, which has brought $40,000 and counting in fines for Trump.
Habba, who’s based in New Jersey, has repeatedly claimed Trump never put anything in writing, whether by email or text. She said she flew to Mar-a-Lago and personally went through whatever documents he had and claims to have found nothing.
“There’s no Post-Its — there’s no file cabinet of Post-Its,” she said Friday.
AG senior enforcement counsel Kevin Wallace interrupted Habba to say that four days of testimony by top Trump Org executives, including the company’s general counsel Alan Garten, directly contradicted her claim.
“We have seen, your honor, some people keep documents that Donald Trump will take notations on,” Wallace said. “And we were told that there were retentions of copies of things that he would sign off on.”
Meanwhile, a parallel criminal investigation into Trump’s business practices by the Manhattan district attorney has reached an apparent standstill. A grand jury which had been hearing evidence against Trump since late last year was expected to expire Friday, people with knowledge of the probe previously told The News.
The 15th-floor “war room” at 100 Centre St., where prosecutors prepared their presentation against Trump, sat abandoned as of Friday, according to the New York Times.
Cohen told The News he felt disillusioned by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s apparent haste to indict Trump. Cohen started providing the DA with evidence in 2019 while in federal lockup and met with investigators who were presenting evidence to the grand jury 15 times.
The DA’s office declined to confirm or deny that the grand jury had reached its expiration. Bragg spokeswoman Danielle Filson pointed to the DA’s previous comments saying that there was “no magic” to the expiration date and that another grand jury can be impaneled.
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