Despite Trump’s mounting debt to the state, which has increased by a crippling $5 million in interest since February, New York Attorney General Letitia James is not going to sit back and enjoy her $454 million civil fraud trial victory.
No, James still has some unresolved matters about Trump on her schedule.
Regarding the $175 million bond that would protect a portion of Trump’s debt to New York while he files an appeal after losing the trial, she is posing tough questions. On Monday, April 22, a hearing regarding the bond’s financial stability is scheduled.
James is also determined to hold Trump and his attorneys accountable for something her office has been protesting about for the past four years: the suppression of evidence.
She contended in a letter on Tuesday night that the integrity of the fraud trial might be in jeopardy.
Three internal email exchanges from 2016 that the AG’s office never received throughout her five years of investigating Trump for deceiving banks into believing he is worth more than he actually is are being examined.
James is aware that the emails are real.
These were presented as proof by Manhattan prosecutors, who on Monday sentenced former Trump CFO Allen Weisselberg to prison for perjury.
However, Weisselberg and his Trump Organization aides did not submit these emails in response to inquiries from Forbes magazine on the worth of Trump’s triplex penthouse in Manhattan. James’ fraud investigation received 900,000 documents from the Trump Organization.
James claimed in the letter he sent on Tuesday night that “the Court is well within its authority to determine if Defendants and their counsel facilitated that perjury by withholding of incriminating documents.”
She contended that unraveling that enigma “certainly falls within the purview of this Court to protect the integrity of its own proceedings.”
An Examination by Forensics
James urged the trial court to order a forensic assessment of “electronic data held by the Trump Organization for the very brief period [of] August to September of 2016,” when the emails were written, as soon as she learned of the missing triplex emails in October.
“The inability to present these subsequent emails suggests a malfunction in the procedure of maintaining, gathering, examining, and generating records,” her office sent in a letter dated October 18 to the magistrate, Justice Arthur Engoron of the state Supreme Court.
The court-appointed monitor, Barbara Jones, a former federal judge, will carry out the forensic investigation. Her team at Bracewell LLP has been closely examining Trump’s financial records since November 2022.
The suggested forensic review is still pending Engoron approval six months later.
Rather, it’s the focus of a contentious new legal dispute between Trump’s attorneys, who are against a review, and James’s lawyer, who has supported the withheld documents movement since 2020.
Lead Enforcement Counsel Kevin Wallace, the attorney for that client, wrote to Engoron last week, saying, “We have already raised multiple times the prospect that Defendants have withheld relevant and responsive information.”
“That the Monitor be tasked with reviewing electronic files collected by Defendants,” including those gathered for transfer to Manhattan prosecutors, is what he formally requests in his letter dated April 4 to the judge.
If the emails “were in the possession of the Trump Organization,” the monitor would study them to ascertain why they were never given over.
This week, Clifford Robert, one of Trump’s attorneys, argued against extending the monitor’s authority in seven single-spaced pages.
“The NYAG’s astonishing request is an evident play to transform the Monitor into her own special counsel,” he stated.
In response to Business Insider’s request for comment, he did not answer right away.
An Already Potent Display
As of March 21, when Engoron expanded the monitor’s job the most, Jones already possesses broad capabilities.
If Trump transfers any money or assets worth $5 million or more, he has to notify the retired judge and her staff five days in advance. If he creates or dissolves any of the more than 400 companies that fall under the purview of the Trump Organization, he has to notify them thirty days in advance.
Prior to being provided to outside parties, she must also examine all corporate financial files, including tax reports.
Additional Fines Are One Type of Potential Penalty!
A judge may impose penalties for spoliation, such as a finding of contempt of court and whatever fines they deem appropriate, based on civil case law from New York.
Marc Frazier Scholl, a former financial crimes prosecutor for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, said that the standard of proof is high.
The AG’s office would have to demonstrate that Trump, Trump Organization officials, and/or their legal representatives were in charge of the requested documents and either destroyed them or refused to turn them up.
Scholl, who is currently of counsel at Lewis Baach Kaufmann Middlemiss, stated that “the first thing if you’re seeking spoliation sanctions, is to prove there was a known obligation to keep the evidence when it was lost or destroyed.”
He projected that if the AG did decide to pursue sanctions, they would probably be small and symbolic.
Many of Trump’s missing documents were eventually legally subpoenaed from outside witnesses who also had copies, according to James’ attorneys.
In the case of the Weisselberg emails, he continued, “They know to ask for them specifically because they got the documents in other ways.”
In the end, the AG’s office emerged victorious in the case, obtaining nearly all of the claims they had made, including the substantial financial award.
“Would they really have gotten a larger judgment if they got more documents?” Scholl enquired.
“I don’t think so,” he declared. “I think this is a shot across the bow, potentially against the Trump counsel.”