New York attorney general has 'uncovered significant evidence' the Trump Organization committed fraud: report

New York Attorney General Letitia James on Tuesday offered new details about how the Trump Organization for years allegedly falsified the value of various New York City properties to secure favorable loan terms and reduce tax obligations.

CNBC reports that in a filing in a New York state court, James says her office has “uncovered significant evidence” suggesting that the Trump Organization’s financial statements for more than a decade relied on misleading valuations of its real estate assets. The filing asserts that potentially misleading valuations “and other misrepresentations” were used by the company owned by former President Donald Trump “to secure economic benefits — including loans, insurance coverage, and tax deductions — on terms more favorable than the true facts warranted."

The filing by James was made in response to the Trump Organization and Donald Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan state court judge’s order last month that Trump and two of his adult children, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, had to submit to interviews under oath by James' investigators.

She cited the example that Trump Organization financial statements from 2010 to 2012 “collectively valued” rent-stabilized apartment units that it owned at $49.59 million - a figure more than 66 times the $750,000 total value that an outside appraiser had assigned to those same units.

In another example, the company’s financial statements from 2012 through 2016, said that Trump’s triplex apartment in Trump Tower in Manhattan “exceeded 30,000 square and valued the apartment at up to $327 million based on those dimensions,” according to the filing.

But in 2017, the company’s statement “slashed the apartment’s value by two-thirds, sizing the residence at just under 11,000 square feet,” which is the figure specified in the offering plan for the building, the filing said.