Amid her ongoing civil investigation of the Trump family business, New York state Attorney General Letitia James (D) has now subpoenaed records related to the Trump hotel housed in Washington, D.C.’s historic Old Post Office building, according to a new report from The Washington Post. These records are held by the General Services Administration (GSA), an arm of the federal government, and items that James is after include “information about how the agency selected” Trump’s business to take up residence at the property, as explained by the Post. James is apparently attempting to determine how Trump may have inaccurately represented his financial condition in pursuing — and obtaining — the lease to use the government-owned building. James has also been investigating how Trump apparently fraudulently adjusted valuations of his company’s assets in other contexts.
A pair of Republican governors, Asa Hutchinson and Larry Hogan, have now said Trump that should not be the future of the GOP.
Hogan: "With America on the wrong path, the stakes are too high to double down on failure."
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) February 1, 2022
Trump is now aiming to sell off his company’s lease for the D.C. building, which could bring in upwards of $100 million for his family business. (A sale would have to be approved by the GSA to go through.) James’s new attention on the Trump D.C. hotel comes months after the House Oversight Committee concluded that Trump had apparently lied to federal authorities about his financial status in the process of obtaining the D.C. building’s lease. Committee chair Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Gerald Connolly (D-Va.) claimed that Trump “concealed hundreds of millions of dollars in debts from GSA when bidding on the Old Post Office Building lease.” Connolly observed, in reference to the sought after sale, that if Trump “walks away from this laughing all the way to the bank with a $100 million profit, we will have debased the whole concept of enforcing conflict of interests laws and ethics.”
National Archives: “As has been reported in the press since 2018, White House records management officials during the Trump Administration recovered and taped together some of the torn-up records. These were turned over to the National Archives at the end of the Trump Admin..”
— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) February 1, 2022
As explained by The Washington Post, the House Oversight Committee released materials that the Trump Organization submitted to the GSA including “three of Trump’s statements of financial condition, from 2008, 2009 and 2010, which appear to include inaccurate or misleading financial information that inflated the value of his assets.” The document from 2008 stated that his Seven Springs estate in Westchester County, New York, was zoned for over two dozen townhomes… but with Trump owning it, the property has actually apparently never been zoned for such development.
Trump uses language he knows caused the Jan 6 violence; suggests he’d pardon the Jan 6 defendants, some of whom have been charged with seditious conspiracy; threatens prosecutors; and admits he was attempting to overturn the election.
He’d do it all again if given the chance.
— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) January 31, 2022
Trump has sued in an attempt to stop James’s civil investigation from proceeding, and with the same lawsuit, the former president is also hoping to get James’s participation in a criminal investigation led by the Manhattan District Attorney stopped. That criminal probe culminated in part in tax evasion charges for the Trump company and its longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, over a years-long scheme in which pricey executive benefits were doled out without the required taxes getting paid. James is seeking the dismissal of Trump’s lawsuit targeting her own investigative work. In a filing, James’s team insisted that the “public interest is served by having [the prosecutors’ office] continue its Investigation into allegations of fraud and misrepresentation in Mr. Trump’s financial statements provided to financial institutions and the government.”
Rep Raskin on Trump's 1/30 memo: "Look no further for the Trump smoking gun: he admits his purpose – to overturn the election. His job was to uphold the Constitution, take care that laws would be faithfully executed. He trashed the Constitution and tried to execute the Republic."
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) January 31, 2022
