Left: New York Attorney General Letitia James speaks to the media, Nov. 6, 2023, in New York. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey, File); Center: Justice Engoron. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File); Right: Former President Donald Trump speaks during a break in closing arguments at New York Supreme Court, Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Nearly one month after the former president’s appeal attacked his Manhattan civil fraud case and $454 million dollar judgment as a politicized quest to punish him for violations that “do not exist at all,” the New York Attorney General’s Office has responded that there was “overwhelming evidence” the Trump Organization and its executives, including Donald Trump’s eldest sons, in the 2010s and into 2021 “acted with an intent to defraud” by engaging in an “illegal scheme to misleadingly inflate the net worth” of Trump “by as much $2.2 billion a year.”
In February, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, following a bench trial that Trump declined to testify during, that the “frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience,” writing, to provide an example, that Trump “insisted that he believed Mar-a-Lago is worth ‘between a billion and a billion five’ today, which would require not only valuing it as a private residence, which the deed prohibits, but as more than the most expensive private residence listed in the country by approximately 400%.”
Trump himself, the judge wrote, was also “aware of many of the key facts underpinning various material fraudulent misstatements” in statements of financial condition, including the representation that his Trump Tower triplex was 30,000 square feet, when it was “actually 10,996 square feet.”
In July, after launching the appeal, Trump lawyers slammed the judge for not understanding “basic banking concepts like a money market account” and accused him of rubber-stamping AG Letitia James’ (D) “lawless efforts” to make good on a campaign promise years ago to investigate the Trump family.
More Law&Crime coverage: Trump appeal says civil fraud trial judge rubber-stamped ‘lawless’ Letitia James’ campaign promise to punish violations that ‘do not exist’
Claiming that Engoron was “overruled with alarming frequency, including multiple times in this case,” the Trump team said the judge’s “erroneous” decisions blessed James’ “limitless power to target anyone she desires, including her self-described political opponents,” with economic implications that are “a disaster for New York” if the massive and “draconian” judgment is not entirely overturned.
On Wednesday, James responded that there was, in fact, sufficient evidence to support her civil fraud case and the judge’s ruling, and that the “defendants tellingly ignore almost all their deceptions” in their brief.
“As trial testimony showed, defendants used these strategies to reverse engineer the value of Mr. Trump’s assets to achieve a net worth that Mr. Trump wanted,” the AG’s office said, claiming he would say things like “I’m actually not worth four and a half billion dollars. I’m really worth more, like, six” and then a draft statement of financial condition would be “revised to inflate asset valuations” to reach that number.
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James told the New York Supreme Court’s Appellate Division, First Department, that Engoron’s decisions should be affirmed, including a ruling imposing monetary sanctions on Trump attorneys for “raising frivolous arguments.”
“Supreme Court’s liability determinations are supported by overwhelming evidence that, in each Statement, defendants used a variety of deceptive strategies to vastly misrepresent the values of Mr. Trump’s assets,” the response said. “For example, defendants valued Mr. Trump’s apartment as if its square-footage was triple its actual size; valued rent regulated apartments as if they were unregulated; valued Mar-a-Lago as if deed restrictions that Mr. Trump signed did not exist; and valued golf properties by secretly including premiums that defendants represented were not included.”
James added that Engoron “properly determined that defendants, who were each deeply involved in the misconduct, knew the Statements were misleading and intended to defraud.”
Law&Crime sought comment from Trump attorney Christopher Kise.
He previously slammed “draconian, unlawful, and unconstitutional penalties,” saying that trial evidence instead established that Trump’s “net worth far exceeded what was reported in his financial statements and the sophisticated bankers involved pursued and enjoyed a long and satisfactory business relationship with him as a prized client.”
Read the AG’s brief here.
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