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PHOTO: President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting, February 12, 2017. (Getty/Chip Somodevilla)
Even as the disputeΒ over document production grinds on in a New York trial court, the Trump family and the Office of Attorney General Letitia James (OAG) are slugging it out at the appellate level over subpoenas for testimony by Donald Jr., Ivanka, and the former president himself.
Back in February, Supreme Court Justice Arthur EngoronΒ orderedΒ the three Trumps to quit stalling and go under oath already. The TrumpsΒ appealed, alleging that the trial court made several errors. They complain that theyβre being maliciously prosecuted β although there is no prosecution, just an investigation β because Tish James hates them. They insist that the OAG is illegally coordinating with the District Attorneyβs criminal investigation, orΒ whateverβs left of it. And they claim a βrightβ to give grand jury testimony, for which they would receive full immunity, rather than being βforcedβ to assert their Fifth Amendment rights at a deposition.
βMy client canβt take the Fifth Amendment. Itβll be all over the papers!β shouted Trumpβs attorney Ron Fischetti at the February hearing.
The Trumps managed to make a more coherent argument thanΒ ughh, donβt wanna, so embarrassingΒ in the appeal β but only slightly.
For her part, the Attorney General hasΒ respondedΒ in herΒ customary fashion: with fifty pages of solid legal argument, leavened with ten pages of extremely embarrassing revelations about the Trump finances guaranteed to catch the eye of legal bloggers.Β Thank you, maβam!
First she reminded everyone that Trump is such a habitual liar that he even overstated both the square footage and the value of his apartment by sixty percent:
OAG has preliminarily concluded that the Statements contain misstatements about residential apartments the Trump Organization owns. For example, the 2012β2016 Statements reflected that Mr. Trumpβs triplex residence in Manhattanβs Trump Tower exceeded 30,000 square feet and valued the apartment at up to $327 million based on those dimensions. In 2017, however, the Statement slashed the apartmentβs value by two-thirds, sizing the residence at just under 11,000 square feetβthe figure specified in the buildingβs offering plan. [Trump Org CFO] Mr. Weisselberg admitted at his deposition that the apartmentβs value had been overstated by βgive or takeβ $200 million.
The OAG goes on allege that the Trump Organization regularly told lenders and other business partners that the valuations on its Statements of Finance had been computed by outside appraisers, when often they company had simply produced them in-house.
For instance, in 2010 the company had an outside appraisal for the Trump Park Avenue building valuing the unsold apartments at $55 million. But they put out financial Statements in 2010β2012 valuing the units at $292 million.
Hilariously, the company assigned yet a third number to the same properties in its own, secret, internal books:
Starting in 2012, the Trump Organization maintained its own internal estimates of the unsold apartmentsβ current market value that it used for business planning purposes. Although still much higher than the independent appraisal, these internal values were, all told, up to $80 million lower than the values that the Statements provided for external consumption.
In fact, the OAG suggests that the Trump Organization regularly maintained a set of internal numbers, which certainly implies they knew the information they were providing to banks and tax authorities was, umm,Β massaged.
To wit, they appear to have routinely βmiscategorizedβ some of Donald Trumpβs limited partnership interests on financial statements distributed to third parties, but suffered no such confusion in their private bookkeeping:
Evidence indicates that the 2013β2020 Statements materially overstated Mr. Trumpβs liquidity by miscategorizing as liquid βcashβ the value of limited partnership interests in which Mr. Trump held only a minority stake, although cash distributions were allowed only in the general partnerβs sole discretion. Internal Trump Organization spreadsheets did not include in cash holdings either the value of these partnership interests or any expected distributions therefromβand one spreadsheet explained that the general partner alone controlled cash distributions.
Well, itβs not a great look.
The Trumps filed their appeal on March 21. In the meantime, the resignation of the outside prosecutors on the Trump caseΒ strongly suggestsΒ that DA Bragg is walking away from the prosecution. Itβs not clear what that means for the Trumpβs claim that testimony before the OAG is functionally an end-run around a criminal grand jury β if Bragg has already decided not to present the case to the grand jury, thereβs no alternative universe where the Trumps are granted immunity as a pre-condition of their testimony.
Thereβs also a possible Easter egg in the OAGβs filing, which appears to refer to the attorneys seconded to the DAβs Trump investigation in the past tense:
While OAG cross-designated two attorneys to DANY in connection with a 2018 grand jury investigation, those two attorneys reported to DANY and operated at DANYβs direction when working on that investigation. These cross-designated attorneys continue to work on other DANY grand jury investigations, where they are likewise subject to DANYβs direction.
No doubt the Trumps would be delighted to find the official disappearance of the criminal investigation in their Easter baskets. But it will be a hollow chocolate bunny indeed if they wind up having to testify in the civil probe anyway.
The People of the State of New York, by Letitia James, Attorney General of the State of New York v. The Trump Organization, Inc. et alΒ [Appellate Docket]
Elizabeth DyeΒ lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.