New York Attorney General Letitia James is suing former President Donald Trump and three of his children for business fraud. According to James, Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Ivanka Trump and their company inflated their net worth by billions of dollars to get banks to give them favorable interest rates.
“This investigation revealed that Donald Trump engaged in illegal behavior for years to inflate his net worth, cheat banks and the people of the great state of New York,” James said at the news conference.
“Stating that you have money that you don’t have is not the art of the deal. It is the art of theft.
James said there are 200 examples of fraud in the claim, including the claim that his house was three times as big as it actually was. He also said that he was referring the matter to federal authorities for a criminal investigation.
The criminal offenses are falsifying business records, issuing false financial statements, insurance fraud, conspiracy and bank fraud, James said.
The case will also be referred to the Internal Revenue Service. “Everyone should be held accountable,” James said. “No one is above the law.”
Last month, Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to answer questions during a statement related to the James investigation.
Trump’s attorney, Alina Habba, and New York Republican Party Chairman Nick Langworthy criticized James’s lawsuit. Langworthy called it “one of the most blatant political publicity stunts I’ve ever seen.”
For his part, Habba said that the lawsuit “does not focus on the facts or the law, but only on promoting the political agenda of the attorney general. It is abundantly clear that the Attorney General’s Office has exceeded its legal authority by meddling in transactions in which there has been absolutely no wrongdoing,” said Habba.
Company executives Allen Weisselberg and Jeffrey McConney are also defendants in the lawsuit filed in state court Wednesday.
Weisselberg, a longtime adviser to the Trump Organization and the company’s longtime former chief financial officer, pleaded guilty to tax evasion and other charges.
He admitted to receiving more than $1.7 million in untaxed extras, including school tuition for his grandchildren, free rent on a Manhattan apartment and lease payments on a luxury car.
James seeks to prevent Weisselberg and McConney from working as CFOs for any New York company. And he does the same in the case of the former president and his three children.
It also asks that Trump pay back the $250 million he received.
