Rachel Mummey | Reuters The New York Attorney General’s Office has “revealed significant evidence” that Trump’s financial statements for more than a decade have been based on misleading real estate appraisals, the office said in a court hearing Tuesday. “These potentially misleading valuations” and other misleading statements “were used” to secure financial benefits – including loans, insurance coverage and tax breaks – on more favorable terms than justified by the facts, “the office said in a statement. Trump’s chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg and auditor Jeffrey McConney “played a key role in creating the financial statements at the heart of this investigation,” according to AG Letitia James. The attorney general said Weisselberg and McConney were among more than 40 witnesses questioned in her office’s political investigation into the company. Allen Weisselberg (C), former President of the United States, Chief Financial Officer of Donald Trumps, arrives to attend the hearing on the criminal case in the lower Manhattan Criminal Court in New York on July 1, 2021. Timothy A. Clary | AFP | Getty Images The testimony came in response to an appeal by the Trump Organization and former President Donald Trump against a Manhattan state court judge last month ordering Trump and two of his adult children, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, to be sworn in by researchers from the James’s office. James has been investigating the business owned by former President Donald Trump for several years. The investigation was sparked by the affidavit of former Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen. Cohen told Congress that the Trump Administration had given different valuations to the same properties in order to achieve better terms for loans and collateral and reduce their taxes. James’s office revealed in February that the Trump Organization’s long-term accounting firm, Mazars, had laid off the company as a customer after saying a decade of Donald Trump’s financial statements “should no longer be based on.” In her testimony Tuesday, James begins by noting that she is investigating “possible false statements or omissions in financial statements describing assets” of Trump’s company. “So far, the investigation has uncovered significant evidence that may indicate that, for more than a decade, these financial statements were based on misleading asset valuations and other falsifications,” the New York Appellate Division’s First Department Appellate Division said in a statement. . This is breaking news. Check again for updates.
