Recent York Attorney General Letitia James is seen during a public safety announcement to stop gun violence at City Hall, July 31, 2023.
Lev Radin | Pacific Press | Lightrocket | Getty Images
Recent York Attorney General Letitia James asked a judge Wednesday for a partial summary judgment against Donald Trump in her $250 million lawsuit accusing the previous president of widespread fraud, citing what she called a “mountain of undisputed evidence” of false and misleading financial statements.
In a court filing, James said evidence shows that if Trump’s net value were accurately calculated, it could be between 17% and 39% lower than what he claimed every year over the course of a decade, “which translates to the big sum of $1 billion or more in all but one yr.”
The allegedly false statements included years when Trump was within the White House, based on the filing.
James’ filing comes two months before the trial is ready to start within the civil suit against the previous president; the Trump Organization; and his sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, at Recent York Supreme Court in Manhattan.
James is suing the Trumps for allegedly defrauding banks, insurance firms and others with the usage of false financial statements.
That trial would still happen to handle other claims, even when Judge Arthur Engoron grants James’ request for partial summary judgment and finds Trump and the opposite defendants committed fraud under Recent York business law.
James, in her motion, says Engoron has to reply just “two easy and easy questions” to make that finding.
One query is whether or not Trump’s annual statements of his financial condition were “false or misleading,” the attorney general wrote.
The opposite query, she wrote, is whether or not Trump and his co-defendants repeatedly used the financial statements to conduct business transactions.
“The reply to each questions is a convincing ‘yes’ based on the mountain of undisputed evidence cited” within the documentation submitted by James’ office, the motion said.
“Based on the undisputed evidence, no trial is required for the Court to find out that Defendants presented grossly and materially inflated asset values within the SFCs [financial statements] after which used those SFCs repeatedly in business transactions to defraud banks and insurers,” James wrote.
“Notwithstanding Defendants’ horde of 13 experts, at the tip of the day it is a documents case, and the documents leave no shred of doubt that Mr. Trump’s SFCs don’t even remotely reflect the ‘estimated current value’ of his assets as they’d trade between well-informed market participants,” the motion said.
CNBC has requested comment from a lawyer for Trump.
