Letitia James

New York Attorney General Letitia James is investigating the Trump Organization, former President Donald Trump's company.

[Subscribe to CNBC on YouTube.](https://www.youtube.com/c/CNBC?sub_confirmation=1) Ivanka previously was an executive at the company. [court filing](https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/supplemental-verified-petition-2022-01-18.pdf) in January. [after The New York Times reported](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/15/nyregion/letitia-james-trump-settlement.html) that she had rejected an offer from Trump's lawyers to settle her probe of the Trump Organization, which is based in Manhattan. [Read CNBC's full coverage](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/21/new-york-sues-donald-trump-company-and-family-members-over-widespread-fraud-claims-seeks-at-least-250-million-in-penalties.html) of James' lawsuit here.] [Donald Trump](https://www.cnbc.com/donald-trump/)'s company, announced a major lawsuit of Trump, three of his adult children and his company over widespread fraud claims.

New York Attorney General Tish James' wide-ranging civil lawsuit against the former president, the Trump Organization and three of his adult children ...

Federal prosecutors are also hauling in former Trump aides and allies to a grand jury probing his efforts to subvert the 2020 election, and an Atlanta-area grand jury is reaching a critical phase in its own election-related probe. The former president was not charged in that case, but James said her new suit is based in part on evidence about Trump’s directives to Weisselberg to inflate various financial statements. As a result, Trump declared the apartment to be worth $327 million, an amount James said is significantly greater than any apartment ever sold in New York City. “The complaint demonstrates that Donald Trump falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to unjustly enrich himself and to cheat the system, thereby cheating all of us.” “The examples I laid out are just scratching the surface of the misconduct that we have uncovered,” James said. Trump also inflated the value of “anticipated income” from golf club membership fees, she alleged. “Today’s filing is neither focused on the facts nor the law – rather, it is solely focused on advancing the Attorney General’s political agenda,” said Trump attorney Alina Habba. In addition, it seeks a permanent ban on the former president and his family members involved in his business enterprises from serving as directors or officers of any New York corporation or business licensed in the state. “The pattern of fraud that was used by Mr. During her campaign, James promised to target Trump for investigation and told voters her election would bring pressure on him similar to that posed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. James’ suit relies on a special statute for repeat instances of alleged violations of the law, stemming from real estate transactions. She's also making a criminal referral to the Feds.

Attorney General Letitia James' lawsuit, filed in state court in New York, is the culmination of the Democrat's three-year civil investigation of Trump and the ...

New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit Tuesday that accuses former President Donald Trump and his adult children of manipulating the value ...

[Trump](/topics/donald-trump/) instead of President Biden. [Trump](/topics/donald-trump/) faces other legal headaches, including a federal probe into [his](/topics/donald-trump/) actions following the 2020 election and the run-up to the Jan. [Donald Trump](/topics/donald-trump/) and [his](/topics/donald-trump/) family have run a corrupt enterprise for years. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by [his](/topics/donald-trump/) supporters. [Trump](/topics/donald-trump/)‘s GOP allies stepped up to defend the former president. [Trump](/topics/donald-trump/), [his](/topics/donald-trump/) family and [his](/topics/donald-trump/) business submitted false documents and that [she](/topics/donald-trump/) believes it violated state and federal laws. [James](/topics/letitia-james/) said the [Trump](/topics/donald-trump/) family, aided by [Trump](/topics/donald-trump/) chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, knowingly reviewed and approved financial statements that were fraudulent. [Donald Trump](/topics/donald-trump/) falsely inflated [his](/topics/donald-trump/) net worth by billions of dollars to unjustly enrich himself and cheat the system, thereby cheating all of us,” Ms. [James](/topics/letitia-james/)‘ three-year civil investigation of [Trump](/topics/donald-trump/) and [the Trump Organization](/topics/the-trump-organization/). [His](/topics/donald-trump/) son, Donald Trump Jr., on Twitter dismissed the probe as a “bulls— Dem witch-hunt.” [Her](/topics/donald-trump/) probe involved a lengthy back-and-forth court battle with Mr. [She](/topics/donald-trump/) said [she](/topics/donald-trump/) is referring the cases to state and federal prosecutors.

The lawsuit alleges former President Donald Trump inflated his net worth in order to defraud lenders. For 20 ...

"Claiming you have money you do not have does not amount to the art of the deal. "The magnitude of financial benefit derived by Mr. "Today's filing represents the culmination of nearly three years of persistent, targeted, unethical political harassment by the New York State Attorney General, Letitia James," said a Trump Organization spokesperson in a statement. "No apartment in New York City has ever sold for that amount," she said, adding the inflated valuation was based on exaggerated square footage despite Trump knowing it wasn't that big. It's the art of the steal." We are confident that our judicial system will not stand for this unchecked abuse of authority, and we look forward to defending our client against each and every one of the Attorney General's meritless claims." As a result, units collectively worth $750,000 were valued at nearly $50 million, according to the lawsuit. [pleaded guilty](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/allen-weisselberg-longtime-trump-organization-chief-financial-officer/story?id=88543418) to unrelated criminal charges of tax evasion brought by the Manhattan district attorney's office, which has been conducting a parallel investigation. "It is abundantly clear that the Attorney General's Office has exceeded its statutory authority by prying into transactions where absolutely no wrongdoing has taken place. Trump himself signed deeds donating his residential development rights and sharply restricting changes to the property." Weisselberg and others carried out year after year in their fraudulent preparation of the Statements," the lawsuit said. "The scheme to inflate Mr.

New York state Attorney General Letitia James filed a civil fraud lawsuit on Wednesday against former President Donald Trump, three of his children and a ...

She won her first election, to the city council in New York, in 2003, running on the ballot line of the Working Families Party, a progressive organization created to operate as a check on the Democratic Party in New York but has since grown into a national group backing liberal candidates around the country. Trump has sought to use that and other statements, including a pledge during a 2018 debate to "focus on Donald Trump" and "follow his money," as evidence that her investigation was politically motivated. James was elected New York City Public Advocate in 2013, succeeding de Blasio, who won his first term as mayor that year. Though James has been mostly quiet in public when it comes to Cuomo, except to defend the integrity of her work, she has been a consistent thorn in his side. "It says a lot, because again, it does go back to, we're all these Black women together in this space and we've got to kind of look out for each other." And at the eye of the storm is Donald Trump, ripping families apart, threatening women's most basic rights," James said in a video produced by NowThis News.

Ivanka, Eric, and Donald Trump Jr. were named as defendants alongside their father and the Trump Organization, all of whom are accused of lying to insurers and ...

[Mar-a-Lago](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/09/fbi-found-nuclear-documents-trump-called-a-hoax.html) in August. Not long after, the Department of Justice [subpoenaed](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/12/us/politics/trump-aides-jan-6-doj.html) around 40 aides in its separate probe of Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Weisselberg belatedly [agreed to cooperate](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/08/allen-weisselberg-flips-on-trump-organization.html) in the criminal probe of Trump’s business empire, and he is named as a defendant in the civil lawsuit alongside fellow executive Jeffrey McConney. [440 times](https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/us-elections-government/ny-trump-fifth-amendment-440-times-nys-attorney-general-james-20220811-x4gbkskjfrhkrfmndvolqi434m-story.html) in four hours. [Donald Trump](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/09/trump-and-barr-corrupted-justice-even-more-than-we-knew.html) and three of his children are accused of committing “staggering” financial fraud by New York attorney general [Letitia James](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/letitia-james-donald-trump-andrew-cuomo.html)’s office, which sued them on Wednesday. Late last year, he filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging that the Democratic attorney general was pursuing a politically motivated inquiry; this was [dismissed](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/27/nyregion/trump-letitia-james-ny.html) by a judge in May. Last week, [according](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/15/nyregion/letitia-james-trump-settlement.html) to the New York Times, Trump’s lawyers proposed a settlement with the attorney general, whose office declined the offer. The 222-page complaint is a sprawling catalogue of how the Trumps and their business empire allegedly inflated property values when applying for loans while lowballing their values at other times. (It is unclear if federal investigators have pursued this line of inquiry; the former U.S. An attorney for Trump said in a statement that James’s office “has exceeded its statutory authority by prying into transactions where absolutely no wrongdoing has taken place. allegedly signed off on some statements, while Ivanka is also accused of inflating the value of her Trump penthouse on Park Avenue by around $12 million. It’s the art of the steal.”

Trump's eldest children, Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric Trump, were also named as defendants, along with two longtime company executives, Allen Weisselberg and ...

She is a fraud who campaigned on a 'get Trump platform, despite the fact that the city is one of the crime and murder disasters of the world under her watch!" It is abundantly clear that the Attorney General's Office has exceeded its statutory authority by prying into transactions where absolutely no wrongdoing has taken place," the statement continued. "Rather, it is solely focused on advancing the Attorney General's political agenda. James has said he misrepresented the value of his properties to secure hundreds of millions of dollars in bank loans and tax breaks. He did this with the help of the other defendants, his children," James said Wednesday. "Another Witch Hunt by a racist Attorney General, Letitia James, who failed in her run for Governor, getting almost zero support from the public, and now is doing poorly against Law & Order A.G.

James announced a civil lawsuit accusing Trump, his adult children, his business and other of submitting years of fraudulent financial statements.

The defendants "repeatedly and persistently manipulated the value of assets to induce banks to lend money to the Trump Organization on more favorable terms" than would have otherwise been available, James said Wednesday morning. [The 220-page civil lawsuit, filed earlier Wednesday in Manhattan Supreme Court](https://www.cnbc.com/ny-sues-donald-trump-family-and-company/), seeks at least $250 million in damages. "We are referring those criminal violations that we have uncovered to the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and the Internal Revenue Service," James said at a press conference.

The attorney general, Letitia James, is seeking to bar the Trump family from ever operating in New York again.

Trump’s lead accountant testified under oath in a deposition that he was “shocked by the size of the discrepancy” between the value for the rent stabilized units at Trump Park listed in a 2010 outside appraisal and the value the Trump Organization assigned to the units. They also would likely argue that the Trump Organization submitted the statements to sophisticated financial institutions that conducted their own due diligence and profited in their dealings with Mr. James outlined the contours of her case in court papers, and disclosed in one filing that Mr. But a footnote in the lawsuit said she provided her findings to the office of the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, noting that the conduct detailed in the complaint appears to violate federal law, specifically bank fraud and false statements to a bank. The company is scheduled to go to trial in October; Mr. James’s civil inquiry began, and both offices began to zero in on the way that Mr. In a statement, the Trump Organization noted that the company’s lenders “profited handsomely — to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in interest and fees” from their dealings with the company. searched Mar-a-Lago as part of an investigation into his removal of sensitive material from the White House; federal prosecutors are investigating his efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss; and a Georgia district attorney is conducting a criminal investigation into his potential election interference in the state. The lack of a damning email — or a witness inside his company willing to testify against him — might complicate her effort to show that he intentionally used his financial statements to defraud lenders and insurers. The statements, yearly records that include the company’s estimated value of his holdings and debts, wildly inflated the worth of nearly every one of his marquee properties — from Mar-a-Lago in Florida to Trump Tower and 40 Wall Street in Manhattan, according to the lawsuit. His company, the Trump Organization, provided the fraudulent financial statements to lenders and insurers, her suit said, “to obtain beneficial financial terms,” including lower interest rates and lower premiums. Trump, his family business and three of his children lied to lenders and insurers for more than a decade, according to the New York attorney general, Letitia James, who accused him of fraudulently overvaluing his assets by billions of dollars in a sprawling scheme.

New York's attorney general tried to downplay the politics hanging over the lawsuit, while allies of former President Donald J. Trump did the opposite.

A lawyer for Mr. Trump and his allies said little of substance in response to the allegations, but they immediately brought out the same playbook that was used to convince his supporters that Republicans like James Comey, the former F.B.I. James’s lawsuit carries political risks for Mr. James of “working for the D.N.C.” posted, “This is all about politics,” while his younger brother, Eric, called it “a joke” and accused Ms. James, a Democrat, also trotted out a catchphrase that had the whiff of the kind of branding that has made Mr. James, who is Black, a “racist” — and dismissed her entire investigation using a stock phrase he employed throughout the Russia investigation and two congressional impeachment inquiries: “witch hunt.” It has to do with the law.” Ms. As state attorney general, she lacks the authority to criminally charge Mr. James said, is not “the art of the deal” but rather “the art of the steal” — a reference to Mr. Her office found over 200 false valuations, she said, calling it evidence of a scheme that she characterized as “astounding.”

The suit alleges that the former president and Eric Trump, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. flagrantly manipulated property valuations to deceive lenders, ...

“Claiming you have money that you do not have does not amount to the art of the deal. Rather than focusing narrowly on a few instances of misconduct, James’s office portrayed Trump, his family and executives of employing a wide array of fraudulent maneuvers in their dealings with lenders and regulators despite knowing that they were illegal. "We are confident that our judicial system will not stand for this unchecked abuse of authority, and we look forward to defending our client against each and every one of the Attorney General’s meritless claims.” It’s the art of the steal,” James said, mocking the titled of Donald Trump’s 1987 book. It seeks to recover more than $250 million in what James’s office says are ill-gotten gains received through the alleged deceptive practices. They have denied any wrongdoing.

The civil lawsuit New York Attorney General Letitia James filed against Donald Trump and three of his kids is not exactly clickbait.

“It’s the art of the steal.” “Claiming you have money that you do not have does not amount to the art of the deal,” she said, with another woeful sigh. Unlike Trump, James appears to have the receipts to back up her bluster. The result is a thing of beauty. But with a line like “art of the steal” up her sleeve, who cares about the details? So, to amp up the emotional stakes of a series of rather dry-sounding crimes whose most direct victim, Deutsche Bank, is one of the To that end, James, who recently ran a It was a theatrical performance, delivered with righteous indignance and milked for every available ounce of disdain. I’m not sure a prosecutor has ever made better use of the dramatic pause: As James explained on Wednesday, her office found evidence of Trump himself “engaging in a conspiracy to commit each. I mean, I’m kidding—fraud is despicable and damaging, this particular fraud is so outlandish as to be absurd, and Trump and his kids (except Tiffany, who had the luck of being mercilessly excluded from the family business) are some of the most notorious consequence evaders on the planet. So yes, James was going to have the world’s eyeballs on her announcement. The

Donald Trump Falsely Inflated His Net Worth by Billions of Dollars to Further Enrich Himself and Cheat the System. Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, ...

- Require the Trump Organization to prepare, on an annual basis for the next five years, a GAAP-compliant, audited statement of financial condition showing Mr. Trump certify the truth and accuracy of his statements as a condition of the guaranty and the continuing loan covenants. Trump obtained more than $100 million in net profit, which was the result of the loan he was able to obtain by using his false and misleading statements. Trump certify the accuracy of his statements annually and included a provision that made him guarantee that the materials provided to the bank to obtain the loan did not include any misleading information. Trump and the Trump Organization obtained a $107 million loan on the building from Deutsche Bank. Trump and the Trump Organization. The Trump Organization received a bank-ordered appraisal for the commercial property at 40 Wall Street that calculated a value for the property of $220 million as of November 1, 2012. In July 2020, the Trump Organization received an appraisal with a value of $84.5 million but on the 2020 Statement the Trump Organization valued Trump Park Avenue at $135.8 million. Trump and others at the Trump Organization in consultation with “professionals,” however, no outside professionals were retained to prepare any of the asset valuations for the statements. The statements are explicit that the preparation was the responsibility of Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization knowingly and intentionally created more than 200 false and misleading valuations of assets on his annual Statements of Financial Condition to defraud financial institutions. “With the help of his children and senior executives at the Trump Organization, Donald Trump falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to unjustly enrich himself and cheat the system.