Trump exaggerated his net worth by as much as $3.6 billion a year, New York's Letitia James now alleges
Left, Brandon Bell/Getty Images. Right, Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
- More than 100 motions, exhibits were filed Friday in NY's civil business-fraud case against Trump and his company.
- Attorney General Letitia James is now alleging Trump's net-worth exaggerations topped $3.6 billion a year.
- Each side is opposing the other's requests to limit, in their own favor, an October 2 fraud trial.
Donald Trump's routine exaggerations of his net worth in official banking filings were far worse than New York officials have previously claimed, totaling some $3.6 billion in a single year, a new filing by the state attorney general alleges.
And that $3.6 billion overstatement "is still a conservative estimate of the extent of the inflation," lawyers for Attorney General Letitia James claim in the filing. That figure exceeds — by a long stretch — the $2.2 billion that James' office used just last week as an example of how much Trump could exaggerate the value of his empire in annual statements of net worth.
New York attorney general's office
This latest detailing of what James has called Trump's "egregious" and self-serving overstatements of wealth was revealed Friday morning in a 97-page document that was itself part of a 100-document fusillade of filings, including motions, responses to motions, affidavits in support of and in opposition to motions, and scores of supporting exhibits.
Both sides are attempting to limit, in their own favor, the issues to be decided at a $250 million civil fraud lawsuit, filed by James a year ago, that will go to trial in Manhattan on October 2.
They are also fighting over James' request that the trial judge, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron fine Trump, his Manhattan-based company, his senior managemnt, and their lawyers $10,000 each for allegedly making repeatedly failed "frivolous" arguments in court documents.
At the October 2 trial, James will ask Engoron to bar Trump and his top management, including sons Donald Trump, Jr., and Eric Trump, from ever running a New York corporation again and from buying any property in the state for five years.
James is accusing Trump of falsely inflating the value of his real-estate and golf-resort holdings in order to lower the interest rates on some $450 million in bank loans. Trump's lies, set down in annual statements of worth over the course of a decade, also convinced insurers and tax officials to cut him millions in additional breaks, she alleges.
On Trump's side, the heftiest document lobbed as part of Friday's filing barrage is a 252-page behemoth, loaded with legal citations, arguing against James' request for summary judgement in the state's favor and accusing her of "coercive" deposition tactics, among other things.
Trump also countered that the attorney general's allegations, because they involve a decade of banking statements, are beyond the relevant statutes of limitation, an argument that earlier this year succeeded in winning Ivanka Trump's removal from the lawsuit.
They also fought James' use of the term "Trump Organization" throughout her filings, saying she "improperly groups all entity Defendants together without regard for the discrete legal entity of each Defendant," a cavil, repeated throughout Friday's 252 pages, that reprises one rejected by the judge in January.
The pre-trial motions are expected to be argued, and possibly decided, at a hearing scheduled for September 22.