Donald Trump and co-defendants of his are now subject to what was termed “enhanced monitoring” amid the court case from New York state Attorney General Letitia James alleging widespread fraud at the Trump family business. The update comes after multiple transactions that were meant to be subject to supervision by Trump business monitor Barbara Jones were not made known to her. A former federal judge, Jones is a court selection for the role.
The transactions include a large sum transferred from a Trump-tied bank account to be used to cover tax obligations incurred by the former president and another large sum produced as he appeals the status of the defamation cases brought by writer E. Jean Carroll, who accused the ex-president of sexual misconduct and had those claims backed, in general terms, by a jury. The Trump tax payments were covered by a cache reaching $29 million. The foundational terms of the oversight undertaken by Jones outlined the ex-judge receiving information on all transactions sending $5 million out of a Trump trust, not just an arbitrary subset.
“Defendants have agreed to enhanced monitoring given the matters described in this report,” Jones wrote in a regular update on her work publicized by sources including the news outlet The Messenger. “Defendants continue to cooperate with me and are generally in compliance with the Court’s orders, and have committed to ensure that all required information, including tax information and cash transfers, are promptly disclosed to the Monitor.”
The Trump defense team is in the middle of its presentation at trial in the case from James, and they’d been pushing for summoning Jones as a witness, though presiding Judge Arthur Engoron was initially rebuffing this idea, which hasn’t yet materialized. Characterizations of Jones’ findings were in dispute in the courtroom, with a Trump lawyer eventually essentially conceding that what they could reasonably claim was just that Jones wasn’t reporting outright misleading behavior not that she wasn’t sharing any concerns at all.
