This week, New York state Attorney General Letitia James finally unveiled a long discussed civil lawsuit accusing former President Donald Trump and three of his adult children of engaging in financial misconduct that centered on brazenly deceptive valuations of over 23 assets held by the Trump company.
James is seeking a range of consequences in her case, although that list doesn’t include the complete shutdown of the Trump Organization. However, she wants the return of a quarter of a billion dollars that she says the company obtained in connection to its deceptive valuations — and she also wants restrictions on the individual members of the Trump family who she singled out. She is hoping for a ban on the Trumps ever again serving as any business’s officers or directors in New York. “This is all about politics. Weaponizing her office to go after her political opponents!” Donald Trump Jr. complained on Twitter. (The other Trump kids named in the lawsuit are Eric and Ivanka. All three testified.) Donald Trump Jr. also accused James of simply hoping to boost her re-election chances, although she has been conducting the investigation that’s behind the new lawsuit for years.
“Letitia James doesn’t care about the law,” Trump Jr. ranted alongside some polling data from a GOP-leaning source. “She’s a Dem activist, who only cares about politics. Here’s the most recent poll in her reelection race. So she’s now desperately trying to fire up her leftwing base with this BS. This is ALL politics, nothing more. Disgraceful!!!” James at some point successfully getting the Trumps blocked from service as directors or executives at businesses in New York state would evidently cover their own family business, although some of the Trump business’s operations, which include various individual entities, were already moved to Florida. This lawsuit isn’t even the end of it — James also provided information she gathered in the case to the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office, which serves the Southern District of New York. She identified concerns of potential bank fraud in violation of federal law.
Eric Trump also weighed in with expected arrogance. (More comments via heated television appearances and social media posts by the targeted Trumps are no doubt forthcoming.) “Letitia James is not working for the Attorney Generals office – she is working for the DNC… 49 days before her election (newest poll has her tied with a Republican in New York State),” Eric insisted on Twitter alongside a compilation of James making comments critical of Trump. James’s personal political affiliation doesn’t negate the evidence that she assembled, like the valuation of a Westchester County golf club getting put together as though pricey initiation fees that didn’t actually exist were already imposed.
Eric and Don Jr. publicly spoke about the lawsuit from James before their father, but Donald eventually insisted that James “is spending all of her time fighting for very powerful and well represented banks and insurance companies, who were fully paid, made a lot of money, and never had a complaint about me, instead of fighting murder and violent crime, which is killing New York State.” In an objective sense, that claim just isn’t true.
