If Trump’s Adult Children Helped Him Commit Fraud, New York Prosecutors Are About to Find Out

Time was, U.S. presidents left office and focused on their philanthropic foundations, became amateur painters, and wrote very long books. Then there’s Donald Trump, who’s taken a slightly different tack, in that he spends his day crashing weddings, trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and drowning in lawsuits, civil probes, and criminal investigations.

One of the most significant legal actions, of course, is the Manhattan district attorney’s inquiry into Trump and his company’s financial dealings, which has thus far resulted in 15 charges against the Trump Organization and its longtime CFO, Allen Weisselberg. (Both parties have pleaded not guilty to all counts, which include criminal tax fraud, grand larceny, falsifying business records, and scheming to defraud the government.) But there are also at least three other criminal inquiries, numerous lawsuits, and an investigation by the New York attorney general’s office, which is about to get a cornucopia of key documents no thanks to the ex-president’s company.

In a September 2 order unsealed Friday, a judge said that the Trump Organization must comply with subpoenas issued by New York attorney general Letitia James’s office, or hire an outside firm to search through its documents and turn them over to prosecutors. According to Bloomberg, the company has until September 30 to “report on its efforts to preserve, collect, and produce all documents responsive to subpoenas issued by James as part of a civil probe into whether the company manipulated the value of its assets for loans and tax breaks,” as ordered by state court Justice Arthur Engoron. If James isn’t satisfied, the Trump Organization will have to hire a third party to oversee compliance, and while it is free to select one, the attorney general will have to approve it, according to The Daily Beast—in case anyone was thinking of hiring Rudy Giuliani & Sons at Your Service LLC. Per Bloomberg:

James sued in August 2020 to enforce about half a dozen subpoenas, including one issued to the company’s former tax attorney. The probe is separate from the recent criminal prosecution of the Trump Organization and its longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, which James’s office is pursuing in cooperation with Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance. The Trump Organization’s press office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

A focus of the attorney general is the appraisal of Seven Springs, a property on 212 acres in Westchester County, outside New York City. James is examining whether Trump’s company gave an accurate valuation for the property when it served as the basis for about $21.1 million in tax deductions for donating a conservation easement for the 2015 tax year. The investigation is [also] looking into transactions involving a neo-Gothic Trump skyscraper in Manhattan called 40 Wall Street, as well as the Trump International Hotel and Tower Chicago and a Los Angeles golf club, court records show.