In A New York Minute, Con't

New York State Attorney General Letitia James is suing the Trump Organization over financial fraud, this time for misrepresenting assets to lenders.

The New York Attorney General is investigating President Trump’s private business for allegedly misleading lenders by inflating the value of its assets, the attorney general’s office said Monday in a legal filing.

In the filing, signed by a deputy to Attorney General Letitia James, the attorney general’s office said it is investigating Trump’s use of “Statements of Financial Condition” — documents Trump sent to lenders, summarizing his assets and debts.

The filing asks a New York state judge to compel the Trump Organization to provide information it has been withholding from investigators — including a subpoena seeking an interview with the president’s son Eric.

The attorney general’s office said it began investigating after Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer,” Michael Cohen, told Congress in February 2019 that Trump had used these statements to inflate his net worth to lenders.

The filing said that Eric Trump had been scheduled to be interviewed in the investigation in late July, but abruptly canceled that interview. The filing says that Eric Trump is now refusing to be interviewed, with Eric Trump’s lawyers saying “we cannot allow the requested interview to go forward … pursuant to those rights afforded to every individual under the Constitution.”

Many of the details of the investigation were redacted or left out of the filing. But it mentioned valuations of three Trump properties: a Los Angeles golf course, an office building at 40 Wall Street and a country estate called “Seven Springs” in Westchester County, N.Y.

Last year, The Washington Post reported that Trump had inflated the potential sale value of the Seven Springs property in a “Statement of Financial Condition” — a type of document he sent to potential lenders to demonstrate his wealth. 

In 2011, Trump’s statement claimed that the property had been “zoned for nine luxurious homes,” and that the value of those home lots raised the value of the overall property to $261 million — far more than the $20 million assessed by local authorities. Local officials said Trump had received preliminary conceptual approval for those homes, but never completed the process or obtained final zoning permission. The homes were never built.

The court filing also mentions a question about a loan on Trump’s Chicago hotel, which one of Trump’s lenders forgave in 2010. The filing does not say why that forgiven loan is of interest to investigators.

The Trump Organization did not respond to a request for comment on Monday morning. Trump still owns his businesses, though he says he has given day-to-day control over to his sons.

 
This is a very polite way of saying that Eric Trump should appear at the AG's office before he is dragged bodily out of the White House by NY State Troopers serving a bench warrant.

The larger question though remains: it's not "Will Trump actually leave power peacefully?" but "Why can't he do so?"

The answer is "Because he will be indicted on January 21, 2021 and will spend the rest of his life in a New York state prison when convicted of felony fraud."

I fully expect Trump to skip town in January and never return to the US, so that he operates out of his golf resorts in Dubai or his licensed properties in Manila, Istanbul, or Pune, India.

Or, you know, Moscow.

Trump I can see operating as "US leader in exile" in some dacha on the Caspian Sea or something, given plenty of broadcast studio gear to show up on Russia Today or Sputnik to rally a violent, white supremacist terrorist militia movement dedicated to lethal attacks against the Biden administration and those who voted for him. An indictment and conviction won't make the lunatic Trump diehards suddenly turn into normal Americans again.

Just a cheery thought.