Attorney General of the state of New York Letitia James has asked a state judge to declare Donald Trump guilty of “repeated and persistent fraudulent use,” even before trial, on Wednesday, claiming that he overstated his net worth by as much as $2.23 billion.
The court filing claims Trump has allegedly been overstating the value of his and his family business’s properties from 2011 to 2021, inflating price values of more than a dozen assets. The attorney general said this established liability for fraud according to the state’s Executive Law, according to Reuters.
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The filing claimed that correcting Trump’s valuations would have reduced his net worth from 17% to up to 39% each year between 2011 and 2021. It claimed that his reported net worth peaked at $6.1 billion in both 2018 and 2019, but if he had held professional appraisals of his properties such as Mar-a-Lago and his penthouse triplex his net worth would have been around $4.2 billion, according to Reuters.
Attorney General James said her request is “just the tip of a much larger iceberg of deception (the state) is prepared to expose at trial,” according to Reuters.
Breaking News: The New York attorney general has asked a judge to find that Donald Trump overvalued his properties by up to $2.2 billion. https://t.co/fjZlwgOAjt
— The New York Times (@nytimes) August 30, 2023
The attorney general also has a $250 million civil suit against Trump, but wants to resolve a civil fraud claim before it goes to trial. This was expressed in the summary judgement in which the new $2.2 billion figure was introduced, according to ABC News.
Trump disagrees, having called his real estate portfolio “the Mona Lisa of properties” according to a transcript that was released today of an April deposition in the suit. “I have — literally, I have some of the greatest pieces of property in the world and they sell—as Mar-a-Lago, some of the things I own in Europe, some of the things I own in New York, even like at Trump Towers, 57th and Fifth, it’s the best location,” Trump said. “I have great assets.”
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