NEW YORK (AP) — A civil investigation has found evidence that former U.S. President Donald Trump’s company used “misleading or fraudulent” asset valuations to obtain loans and tax breaks, the New York prosecutor’s office said Tuesday night. .
State authorities have not yet decided whether to file a civil suit over the allegations, according to court documents, but investigators need to question Trump and his two eldest sons as part of the investigation.
Trump and his lawyers said the investigation was politically motivated.
In court documents, the office of state Attorney General Letitia James gave its most detailed description yet of its lengthy investigations into allegations that Trump’s company repeatedly misestimated the value of its assets to obtain favorable conditions on loans or reduce your tax burden.
The Trump Organization, according to prosecutors, exaggerated the value of land donations in New York and California in documents presented to the Internal Revenue Service of the United States Department of the Treasury (IRS) to justify multi-million tax deductions. of dollars.
The company also misrepresented the size of Trump’s Manhattan penthouse by stating that it was three times its actual size, a difference in value of about $200 million, James’ office said, citing the testimony. of the one who was financial manager of the firm for many years, Allen Weisselberg. The former financial chief was charged last year with tax fraud in a parallel criminal investigation.
James’ office detailed its findings in a court motion to compel Trump, his daughter Ivanka Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. to cooperate with subpoenas.
Investigators said in court documents that they had “assembled considerable additional evidence indicating that the Trump Organization used fraudulent or misleading asset valuations to obtain a variety of economic benefits, including loans, insurance coverage and tax deductions.”
Lawyers for the Trump family did not initially respond to requests for comment.
Trump’s legal team has tried to block the subpoenas, which it described as an “unconstitutional and unprecedented move.” Lawyers say James is improperly trying to secure testimony that could be used in the parallel criminal investigation, which is overseen by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Trump sued James in federal court last month in an attempt to end his investigation. In the lawsuit, his lawyers claimed that the prosecutor, a Democrat, violated the former Republican president’s constitutional rights in a “thinly veiled effort to publicly disparage Trump and his associates.”
The former president has in the past dismissed the investigations of James and Bragg as “witch hunts.”
In a statement Tuesday night, James’s office said it had not yet decided whether to pursue legal proceedings, although evidence gathered so far showed the investigation should continue unimpeded.
“For more than two years, the Trump Organization has employed delaying tactics and litigation in an attempt to thwart a legitimate investigation into its financial operations,” James said. “So far, our investigation has uncovered significant evidence suggesting that Donald J. Trump and the Trump Organization falsely and fraudulently valued multiple assets and misrepresented those values to financial institutions for financial gain.”
Although the civil investigation of James is separate from the criminal investigation, his office has participated in both and sent several attorneys to work with the Manhattan prosecutor’s office.
James’ office said that under state law, it could pursue “a wide range of remedies” against companies found to have committed business fraud, “such as revoking a license to do business in the state, intervening to remove a member or director of the board of directors and the restitution (…) of profits obtained illicitly”.
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