Photo courtesy of Thomas Good / Next Left Notes via WikiMedia Commons.
Attorney General Letitia James, pictured above in 2008, has filed a suit against the Trump family.
By Amelia Potter ’26 and Anoushka Kuswaha ’24
Staff Writer | News Editor
On Wednesday, Sept. 21, New York Attorney General Letitia James filed an extensive lawsuit accusing former President Donald Trump of “overvaluing his assets by billions of dollars,” The New York Times reported. James is suing the family-run Trump Organization, as well as Trump’s three eldest children, Ivanka, Eric and Donald Trump Jr.
James’ lawsuit accuses the former president of fraud through the false exaggerated valuations of his properties and other assets to receive favorable insurance policies and loans, as reported by The New York Times. The duplicity is widespread. The lawsuit accuses Trump of over 200 intentionally “false and misleading asset valuations” in just 11 of the Trump Organization’s financial statements spanning decades. In a press release, James said, “The very foundation of his purported net worth is rooted in incredible fraud and illegality. … There are not two sets of laws for people in this country; we must hold former presidents to the same standards as everyday Americans. I will continue to ensure that no one is able to evade the law, because no one is above it.”
In response, former President Trump called James “a fraud who campaigned on a ‘get Trump’ platform” on social media, as reported by The New York Times. The same article also referenced that in the past, Trump has rallied his supporters by painting himself as a “political martyr” in response to law enforcement accusations. Nevertheless, there is no historical precedent of a former U.S. president confronted with such an ample assemblage of lawsuits as Trump now finds himself up against, according to The New York Times.
James is using a decades-old statute known as Executive Law 63 (12) against Trump. This law has previously been used against “the most egregious corporate malefactors,” The New York Times stated. Executive Law 63 (12) grants the Attorney General the upper hand regarding the lawsuit, permitting extensive investigation into the Trump family’s financial statements and business dealings. Because of the statute, James has a relatively “low bar,” as to what can be defined as fraud, said David Nachman, a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School, according to The New York Times. Essentially, the law allows the Attorney General to heavily investigate companies before suing them, an action typically only permitted after a lawsuit against a company has been filed. James has utilized this law by “issu[ing] subpoenas, conduct[ing] depositions and do[ing] other digging upfront,” The New York Times reported.
The New York Times reports that the lawsuit seeks an estimated sum of $250 million gained through Trump’s false representations of assets. Furthermore, according to the website of the Office of the Attorney General, it requests the court to permanently bar Trump and his eldest children from serving running businesses in New York State, as well as to appoint an independent authority to oversee all financial asset reporting done by the Trump family and by their associated businesses.
This lawsuit is the result of a three-year investigation into Trump and his organization by the Office of the Attorney-General. However, as reported by NBC, Trump’s most probable defensive strategy will be to delay the proceedings for as long as possible, and former prosecutors said that it might “take years for the case to get to trial.”
This lawsuit comes amidst a storm of other legal woes for Trump, who is no longer shielded by the presidential protections he enjoyed while in office. In addition to this latest lawsuit, The New York Times reported that Georgia’s Fulton County district attorney Fani T. Willis is currently building a case accusing Trump of attempting to undermine the results of the 2020 election. Furthermore, the Jan. 6 investigatory committee has laid the groundwork for a possible criminal case against Trump. The former president is also experiencing controversy from this past August wherein the FBI uncovered classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence and he is now being sued with criminal charges for mishandling documents, as well as obstruction of justice in relation to his handling of the documents, The New York Times reported.