New York state Attorney General Letitia James is pursuing a dozen former executive assistants to Trump as she keeps up the pressure on the former president and his family business. She wants info about the handling of documents at the Trump company.
James has been investigating the Trump family business over apparent financial misconduct including repeatedly deceptive valuations connected to various company assets. These untrustworthy valuations would’ve been set to provide Trump’s company — known as the Trump Organization — with various unearned financial benefits, such as favorable loan terms and tax breaks. In one example, the values of conservation easements at Trump properties in California and New York were apparently overstated, which would’ve allowed the Trump Organization to win tax benefits it hadn’t earned.
As an April press release from James’s office explained, “evidence indicates that the Trump Organization submitted fraudulent or misleading valuations of conservation easements to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), specifically related to Seven Springs (in Westchester County, NY) and Trump National Golf Club, Los Angeles (in Los Angeles County, CA).” Tax deductions were obtained with those apparently fraudulent or misleading valuations. As for Trump’s former executive assistants, James “wants them to swear out affidavits explaining the process they used to organize and preserve Trump’s personal business records, scant few of which have been produced for the AG’s probe,” as Business Insider explained. Trump was apparently tasked with getting in touch with these former assistants.
It’s apparently been a struggle for Donald to actually set up the information that James wants. According to new revelations from Trump’s side, six of the ex-assistants didn’t return phone calls from the ex-president’s team. The team successfully got in touch with one former assistant who said they’d call back — but hadn’t done so as of a recent court filing. One of the dozen former Trump executive assistants was eventually found and swore that they had “no formal document retention policy.” Trump already paid a $110,000 fine for failing to comply to a sufficient extent with demands from James in association with the civil probe she’s leading into Trump’s business, and New York Judge Arthur Engoron has apparently warned the former president’s side that future non-compliance could lead to retroactive fines apparently covering the time period of that non-compliance. Trump’s fine was originally $10,000-a-day.
Meanwhile, three other of the 12 sought after former assistants to Trump apparently didn’t leave forwarding numbers with the company, while a fourth who did apparently changed their number in the time since. One individual’s phone was out-of-service. Insider’s recap of the Trump team’s success or lack thereof at getting in touch with ex-assistants appears to include 13 total explanations, meaning two might apply to the same person. Trump and two of his adult children were ordered by a New York appeals panel to testify as part of James’s probe; his side previously argued against that prospect because of the possibility of using info gleaned from it in the Manhattan-oriented criminal investigation against the company. Trump also recently lost a separate lawsuit he filed to try and completely stop James from continuing her civil probe. Trump promptly appealed that loss, furthering his desperate fight against the investigation.
