The New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office said in a filing on Wednesday that former President Donald Trump regularly exaggerated his personal wealth to financial institutions by up to as $2.2 billion one year, or 38.5%.
The numbers are the most recent information in a massive $250 million civil complaint James filed against Trump, three of his eldest children, and the Trump Organization last year. The lawsuit is contained in a 100-page motion for partial summary judgment. The lawsuit describes purported efforts made over a ten-year period to artificially increase the former president’s personal net worth in order to secure advantageous loan terms.
Prosecutors argued that the former president as well as certain Trump Organization employees utilized financial statements as a “vehicle” to falsely inflate their net worth by billions of dollars per year between 2011 and 2021 in court documents filed on Wednesday. They asked the court to rule in favor of the Attorney General’s Office only on that claim.
Prosecutors claimed in the document filed on Wednesday that the defendants had “falsely inflated by billions of dollars” the value of various assets reported on Trump’s yearly statement of financial status, which served as his own personal financial report card and falsely increased the value of his total net worth.
Prosecutors’ calculations show that from 2011 to 2021, Trump consistently exaggerated his personal financial situation by 17% to 39% and that between 17% and 31% of those overstatements occurred while he was in office.
Prosecutors claim that Trump misrepresented his personal fortune by more than $1.1 billion in his first year in office and by $1.9 billion in his financial situation in 2018.
The assertions were regularly given to financial institutions by Trump and, at times, trustees of his revocable trust in order to obtain and retain more favorable loans and insurance, “reaping hundreds of millions of dollars in illegally obtained savings and profits,” according to the prosecution.
They urged the court to take into account “two simple and straightforward questions,” specifically whether Trump’s financial condition statements from 2011 to 2021 were “false or misleading” as well as whether defendants “repeatedly or persistently” exploited the documents to carry out business operations.
According to the prosecution, if both questions are answered in the affirmative, the court should decide the case in their favor before the case goes to trial.
According to the document, the former president exaggerated his wealth by placing a high value on his assets, which “significantly exceeded professional appraisals, which his employees were aware of and chose to ignore.”
In one case, they contend that Trump placed a value on the undeveloped land of his golf course in Aberdeen, Scotland, based on the notion that he could construct and market more single-family houses than were permitted by local authorities.
Trump, on the other hand, occasionally valued his rented property at 40 Wall Street “at more than twice the appraised value,” they claimed.
In addition, they claim that Trump overstated the value of his triplex apartment in Trump Tower by almost tripling its real square footage, which “inflated the apartment’s value by approximately $100-$200 million every year from 2012 to 2016.”
An inquiry for comment on Wednesday went unanswered by a Trump lawyer right away. In the matter, Trump has denied wrongdoing and called the investigation a “witch hunt.”
On the other counts, the civil trial is scheduled to start in October.