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New York AG claims Trumps cannot avoid testifying in investigation

Late Tuesday night, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced her office filed motions to compel former President Trump and two of his children, Donald Trump, Jr., and Ivanka Trump, to cooperate with its investigation into the family’s business dealings.

After 11pm ET, James issued a statement. She also posted a series of tweets about the moves. In those announcements, she said her office has “significant evidence” the Trump Organization deliberately set phony values on properties the New York-based business owned to get desirable rates on loans, insurance policies and even taxes.

There are seven specific properties cities as examples of the practices. One was Trump Park Avenue in Manhattan. According to the attorney general’s office, financial statements from the former president showed the property’s value ranged from $135 million to $350 million.

Most of the value came from unsold condominiums in the 32-story tower. For example, in 2011, the property was valued at $311.6 million, with the outstanding condos worth $293.1 million. However, James’ office claims those values were much higher than the company’s determinations for business purposes.

Another property in question is Trump National Golf Club Westchester in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y., a New York City suburb. Trump’s 2011 financial statement valued the property at $68.7 million, with nearly $12.8 million of that tied to 67 open memberships that were worth $150,000 each. However, the investigation found that none of the new members in 2012 paid the fee.

“Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., and Ivanka Trump have all been closely involved in the transactions in question, so we won’t tolerate their attempts to evade testifying in this investigation,” James tweeted.

James’ office had a deadline of midnight Tuesday to respond to the Trumps’ motion to block the subpoenas. In addition to responding to the ongoing investigation at the state level, the former president has also filed a federal lawsuit seeking to stop James’ investigation.

James began a civil investigation nearly three years ago into the former president and the company he founded. According to the court documents, which were filed at 10:58pm ET on Tuesday in a Manhattan court, the attorney general’s office has received sworn testimony from several current and former Trump Organization employees and gathered 900,000 documents from the company.

Eric Trump, another of Trump’s children, was forced to testify last year.

James said the office has not yet determined if the evidence is strong enough to justify formal legal action against the company or members of the family.

“…it is a virtual certainty that each of the Respondents possesses information pertinent to those matters,” the motion stated. “It would be absurd to suggest (and Respondents do not even try to do so) that they lack such relevant information. Respondents thus have offered no legitimate ground to quash these subpoenas. Accordingly, their testimony should be compelled.”

This article was originally posted on New York AG claims Trumps cannot avoid testifying in investigation

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