Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, filed a civil case against Donald Trump on Wednesday for claimed “many acts of fraud” after a three-year investigation into the former president’s finances.
She told reporters she was suing Trump for breaching the law as part of his attempts to make money for himself, his family, and his business after reviewing “millions of papers” with a team of detectives. Donald Trump and his three adult children, Don Jr., Eric, and Ivanka Trump, were particularly mentioned by James as having “persistently” exaggerated the worth of assets.
In financial documents from 2001 to 2021, the attorney general, who is up for reelection in November, said the scheme’s overall financial advantage, which included interest savings and transaction revenues, was $250 million. In response, the former president said James, a black woman, is “racist” and that she herself is a “fake.”
The principal claims in the complaint are broken down as follows:
Trump claimed his penthouse suite in the Trump Tower was three times larger than it really was.
James claims that Trump misrepresented the size of his penthouse at the Trump Tower in Manhattan, saying it was 30,000 square feet when it was only 11,000 square feet. James referred to Trump’s $327 million valuation of the condo as “absurd” since it was based on the exaggerated square footage.
No other New York City apartment has ever sold for that much, she said.
Mar-a-Lago was appraised by Trump at over ten times its actual value.
According to James, the $739 million valuation of Trump’s golf club in Florida was “based on the incorrect assumption that it was unrestricted land and could be expanded for residential use.” Her staff emphasised that Trump donated the property’s residential development rights and severely limited making any adjustments. She asserts that the property, which generates roughly $25 million in income annually, should have been appraised at $75 million.
In 2020, a value of $84.5 million was assigned to the 32-story condo skyscraper Trump Park Avenue, which comprises 120 units and eight penthouses. In a 2020 financial disclosure declaration, Trump reported the property’s value as $135.8 million. James’ team discovered that between 2011 and 2012, Trump ‘ignored legal constraints’ by listing 12 rent-stabilized apartments in the building by their market rent value.
Trump said that the condos were worth $50 million, which is more than 65 times their 2010 appraisal value of $750,000.
Trump’s Seven Springs mansion was worth roughly 10 times more than when it was first evaluated only a few years earlier.
For $7.5 million, Trump bought his 213-acre home in Westchester County, New York, in 1995. Twenty years later, in 2006, it was estimated to be worth $30 million, but according to Trump’s financial filings from 2011 to 2021, the property’s value was $261 million and $291 million, respectively.