Former President Donald Trump refuted New York Attorney General Letitia James’s claims that he inflated his net worth and engaged in financial fraud.
“The thing I have is a great case based on phenomenal numbers that show a net worth of billions of dollars more than she viciously & falsely claimed, very little debt, big cash, a powerful disclaimer clause, paid off loans, no defaults, ‘happy’ banks, great assets. I was defamed by NYS—election interference!”
Ms. James has brought a case against President Trump and two of his children in a multimillion-dollar civil lawsuit and is seeking to bar him from doing business or engaging in real estate acquisitions in New York for five years.
She is also seeking to bar him and his children from serving in any high-level executive roles in any company in New York.
She is also seeking $250 million in penalties.
Summary Judgment and Testimony
On Wednesday, Ms. James urged the judge in a court filing to give a summary judgment on one of the seven claims she has brought against President Trump.She argued that an “overwhelming amount of evidence” established that President Trump committed fraud and submitted false statements to bankers, inflating his wealth by somewhere between $812 million and $2.2 billion each year.
“While this is just the tip of a much larger iceberg of deception Plaintiff is prepared to expose at trial–which would result in carving off billions more from Mr. Trump’s net worth–it is more than sufficient to permit this Court to rule as a matter of law that each SFC from 2011 to 2021 was false or misleading,” Ms. James wrote.
Also on Wednesday, President Trump’s lawyers released, in a court filing, the nearly 500-page transcript of a seven-hour-long interview the former president gave when he was deposed for the case in April.
In the hours-long deposition, the former president was questioned about the management and dealings of the Trump Organization, where he detailed the value of several of his properties.
“I never got a default notice. I paid interest every quarter, every month even before it was due, if it came on a holiday,” he said, testifying that the banks and lawyers they worked with had profited and were satisfied with the deals.
He told the prosecutors that his “brand” value increased during the years he was president, but he purposely refrained from doing any deals, not because it would have been illegal, but because he felt it was unethical, adding that he took his example from George Washington who kept two desks, separating business and state matters.
President Trump’s lawyers asked for the case to be dismissed, arguing that the statute of limitations have run out and that the prosecution had not brought forth proof of harm.
“The undisputed record further establishes his companies timely paid hundreds of millions of dollars in interest to their lenders and never defaulted on a loan or even been late on a loan payment during the entire 15+ year time period the NYAG has sought to scrutinize in this action,” they wrote, arguing there was no intent to defraud lenders or insurers.
President Trump, who declared his intention to run for office last November, has maintained that he has done nothing wrong in the several cases brought against him, decrying the legal actions as election interference.
Several court dates are expected to interfere with his campaign schedule, with another civil case in New York brought against him by writer E. Jean Carroll over accusations of defamation beginning Jan. 15, 2024, the same day as the Iowa Republican caucus.
