New York Attorney General Letitia James continued her campaign of pressure Monday night against Donald Trump and his years-long failure to hand over personal business documents in her investigation into the Trump Organization. In a new appeal, her office again asked Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. to sit down to testify. However, the testimony singles out the former president, saying that the AG’s office has received hundreds of thousands of documents related to Trump’s real estate – but “only a handful” from Trump’s own files. That lack of words on paper only makes his oral testimony more vital, James said in his testimony Monday night in a Manhattan jury – the latest volley in AG’s three-year investigation into the Trump Organization. At a hearing in Manhattan Supreme Court earlier Monday, James’s lawyers also denounced Trump’s lack of personal documents. Of the approximately 900,000 documents handed over to James’s office by the Trump administration so far, only 10 came from the former president’s personal or “prison” files, a lawyer from James’s office revealed at the hearing. “Mr. Trump regularly reviewed printed material and communicated with staff through sticky notes,” said a statement Monday night, citing an earlier statement by Trump’s adviser Alan Garten. “Mr. Trump’s aides kept his files in lockers at the Trump Office,” the statement said. “To date, the Trump Administration does not appear to have investigated these files to any significant degree, despite OAG being summoned for these documents,” Monday night’s statement said. The Insider has previously reported that the coveted sticky banknote was for decades in some beige metal filing cabinets lining a wall on the 26th floor of the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The three Trump have been fighting for ouster since being summoned in December. They argued in court hearings and testimonies, including the lawsuit filed earlier this month, that anything they said during a testimony in James’s political investigation could be used against them in a criminal investigation also conducted by her office. But in Monday’s testimony, AG argued that Trump could invoke the protection of the fifth amendment against self-incrimination – and as former president Eric Trump’s son did 500 times during a deposition in front of James’s office in October of 2020— but you have to Sit. “In their deposits, if they choose, [the Trumps] “They can exercise their right to refuse to answer any questions that require answers that may incriminate them,” James wrote in the 80-page statement Monday night. Opposing the testimony, Trump said that a recorded testimony showing them invoking the fifth could one day “prejudge” a political court against them. James also claimed in the new statement that it was too early for Trump to claim, as they have repeatedly said, that her investigation was a political vendetta and that they were victims of “selective persecution.” There is no persecution, he explains – yet. “There is no enforcement action and the OAG” – the attorney general’s office – “is just investigating to determine whether he will be charged with civil fraud,” James wrote. Trump also failed to prove that James is “selective,” he wrote. “For example, they have failed to prove that the OAG has refused to investigate or prosecute entities or individuals similar to the Trump Organization or its authorities,” he wrote. James has repeatedly said in court that Trump has been playing fast and loose with the numbers all these years, inflating the value of his assets when he applied for business loans and collateral, and inflating the values of some of the same assets to reduce his real estate taxes. He reiterated this claim in his minutes Monday night. “So far,” he wrote, “research has revealed significant evidence that may indicate that, for more than a decade, these financial statements have been based on misleading asset valuations and other misleading statements to secure financial benefits – including loans, insurance coverage and tax deductions – on more favorable terms than those that justify the facts. “ The ouster of the three Trump is necessary “to contribute to the final decision on whether there was fraud,” he wrote, “and who may be responsible for any such fraud.” The next step in the deposition battle will be for the Manhattan Court of Appeals to set a date for oral hearings.
