NY Attorney General investigating if Trump inflated assets
President Donald Trump speaks during a briefing at the White House on Aug. 13, 2020 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
NEW YORK - New York’s Democratic attorney general asked a court Monday to enforce subpoenas into an investigation into whether President Donald Trump and his businesses inflated assets on financial statements.
Attorney General Letitia James filed a petition in state trial court in New York City naming the Trump Organization, an umbrella group for the Republican president’s holdings, as a respondent along with other business entities. The filing also named Eric Trump and Seven Springs, a New York estate owned by the Trump family.
The attorney general’s office is investigating whether the Trump Organization and the president improperly inflated the value of assets to secure loans and obtain economic and tax benefits. Investigators are looking into whether the Trump Organization and its agents improperly inflated the value of the Seven Springs north of the city.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - FILE New York State Attorney General Letitia James. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
In the court filings, the attorney general’s office wrote that “information regarding the valuation of Seven Springs is significant” to the office’s investigation.
The investigation was launched in March 2019 after Trump’s longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen told Congress that Trump had inflated the value of his assets to obtain more favorable terms for loans and insurance coverage.
Since then, the attorney general’s office has issued “a number of subpoenas and has taken testimony seeking information material to these matters,” the court filing said. Investigators have not yet determined whether the law was broken.