New York State Attorney General Letitia James on Wednesday announced she is suing former President Donald Trump and three of his children for fraud stemming from her long-running civil investigation into the Trump Organization’s business dealings.
“I am announcing today that we are filing a lawsuit against Donald Trump for violating the law as part of his efforts to generate profits for himself, his family and his company,” James said. “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.”
James said her office interviewed 65 witnesses and reviewed millions of documents as part of its investigation. In addition to Trump, the additional defendants named in the lawsuit include his three eldest children (Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka) as well as former Trump Organization executives Allen Weisselberg and Jeff McConney.
“Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization repeatedly and persistently manipulated the value of assets to induce banks to lend money to the Trump Organization on more favorable terms than otherwise would have been available to the country, to pay lower taxes, to satisfy continuing loan agreements and to induce insurance companies to provide insurance coverage at higher limits and at lower premiums,” James said at during the Wednesday morning remarks.
An October 2018 report in the New York Times found that Trump had participated in a series of tax schemes related to his father's real estate empire. In 2019, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen discussed these business tactics during testimony with the House Oversight Committee.
Trump attended a deposition with James' office last month in Manhattan, where he declined to answer questions, using his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. In a statement, Trump said he "declined to answer the questions under the rights and privileges afforded to every citizen under the United States Constitution" and attacked James for what he called a "despicable attempt" to bring down his company.
James told a judge in January that Trump's son Eric invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 500 times in an October 2020 deposition. The former president's other children Donald Jr. and Ivanka, however, reportedly testified in James's probe in early August and did not invoke the Fifth Amendment.
The former president is still dealing with a federal investigation into his mishandling of classified documents, which led to the FBI raid on his Florida home last month. Trump is also still under scrutiny for his role in the violence of Jan. 6, 2021, which is being investigated by the Justice Department and a House committee. Additionally, a Georgia district attorney is investigating his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state, which voted for Joe Biden.
