Donald Trump isn’t helping his own case while dealing with a civil investigation into his business by New York state Attorney General Letitia James (D). Among other investigative moves, James is seeking testimony from Donald and two of his adult children — including Donald Jr. and Ivanka — in addition to further troves of documents from his company, and James’s and Trump’s teams were set to face off in court over the stand-off this week. Now, there’s a new problem: as Reuters explains, “In a court filing on Monday in response to the attorney general’s allegations of misleading financial statements, Trump, through his attorneys, repeatedly denied he had knowledge or information to form a belief as to the claims.” And in a rambling public statement that was issued the next day he outlined detailed knowledge on his part about what’s at issue.
Broadly, Trump commented that the Trump Organization is “a great company with fantastic assets that are unique, extremely valuable and, in many cases, far more valuable than what was listed in our Financial Statements”… and besides the fact that these comments indicate apparently expansive knowledge on the ex-president’s part about these financial concerns, he also seems to be directly admitting to something that’s been alleged. Besides the allegations of the Trump company overstating the values of its assets to potential lenders, making themselves look better off, the company has also been alleged to have kept values lower in other contexts in order to help secure tax breaks… so is Trump just admitting to this allegation?
In a recent filing from James’s office, they noted that it’s “not unusual for parties to a legal proceeding to disagree about the facts… But it is truly rare for a party to publicly disagree with statements submitted by his own attorneys in a signed pleading — let alone one day after the pleading was filed.” The Trump Organization is floundering — its longtime accounting firm, Mazars, recently moved to end its relationship with the company and revealed a belief that statements of financial condition for the Trump Organization with which it was involved should no longer be considered to be trustworthy. Mazars executive William J. Kelly told the Trump company that the accountants arrived at “this conclusion based, in part, upon the filings made by the New York Attorney General on January 18, 2022, our own investigation, and information received from internal and external sources.”
NEW: US House Oversight Committee asks US General Services Admin. to terminate the DC Old Post Office lease held Donald Trump, citing the new questions about the reliability of Trump's financial statementshttps://t.co/4bKhuYyHLD
— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) February 17, 2022
That rambling statement from the ex-president repeatedly undercut his position; as also shared by Reuters, he additionally self-confidently asserted to observers: “Remember when the attorney general and or District Attorney say they think my financial statements may be high, I don’t even include these branding numbers in them, which is far more than any discrepancy they may have” — another apparent admission of inaccuracy!
Some of you appear to be forgetting how corrupt some cabinet officials in the Trump administration were. Let us remind you that former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke racked up 18 federal investigations in under two years. So the latest IG reports of his behavior? Unsurprising.
— Citizens for Ethics (@CREWcrew) February 17, 2022
