Letitia James, Donald Trump

New York State Attorney General Letitia James announced Wednesday that she is suing former President Donald Trump and three of his children for fraud stemming from her three-year civil investigation into the Trump Organization’s business dealings.

The civil lawsuit seeks at least $250 million in damages.

It also seeks to permanently bar Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Ivanka Trump from serving as an officer of a company in New York, and permanently prohibit the Trump companies named in the suit from doing business in New York state.

James said she has asked federal prosecutors in Manhattan and the IRS to investigate Trump for possible federal crimes. She said that evidence obtained during her three-year civil probe of Trump indicated possible crimes of bank fraud and making false statements to financial institutions.

James said Trump massively overstated the values of his assets in statements to banks, insurance companies and the IRS to obtain more favorable loan and insurance terms for his company, as well as to lower its tax obligations.

The lawsuit alleges that from 2011 to 2021, Donald Trump and the Trump Organization knowingly and intentionally created more than 200 false and misleading valuations of assets on his annual Statements of Financial Condition to defraud financial institutions.

James said that Trump had falsely claimed that his apartment in Manhattan was more than triple its actual size as part of the alleged fraud.

And the suit says Trump valued his Mar-a-Lago club property in Palm Beach, Florida, on the false premise that it sat on unrestricted property and could be developed for residential use, even though he allegedly knew that property was subject to a variety of tight restrictions.

James said that in reality, Mar-a-Lago generated less than $25 million in annual revenue and should have been valued at about $75 million, not the $739 million that was claimed.

In addition to the Trumps, the defendants in the suit include Allen Weisselberg, who acted for years as chief financial officer of the Trump Organization.

Both Weisselberg and the Trump Organization were criminally charged last year by the Manhattan district attorney’s office for an alleged scheme to avoid paying taxes on portions of the compensation given to company executives, among them Weisselberg.

Other defendants in the suit include Weisselberg’s lieutenant, Jeffrey McConney, as well as several Trump companies, among them ones that own properties in Manhattan, Westchester County, New York, Washington, D.C., and Chicago.

The seven-count suit alleges persistent and repeated fraud; falsifying business records; conspiracy to falsify business records; issuing false financial statements; conspiracy to falsify false financial statements; insurance fraud; and conspiracy to commit insurance fraud.

January 6 Hearings (Still Photo Courtesy of PBS)

The Associated Press reports the House panel investigating the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol laid the blame firmly on Donald Trump Thursday night, saying the assault was hardly spontaneous but an “attempted coup” and a direct result of the defeated president’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.

With a never-before-seen 12-minute video of extremist groups leading the deadly siege and startling testimony from Trump’s most inner circle, the January 6th committee provided gripping detail in contending that Trump’s repeated lies about election fraud and his public effort to stop Joe Biden’s victory led to the attack and imperiled American democracy

The hearings may not change Americans’ views on the Capitol attack, but the panel’s investigation is intended to stand as its public record. Ahead of this fall’s midterm elections, and with Trump considering another White House run, the committee’s final report aims to account for the most violent attack on the Capitol since 1814, and to ensure such an attack never happens again.

Testimony showed Thursday how Trump desperately clung to his own false claims of election fraud, beckoning supporters to the Capitol on January 6 when Congress would certify the results, despite those around him insisting Biden had won the election.

Former Attorney General Bill Barr in videotaped testimony said: “I made it clear I did not agree with the idea of saying the election was stolen..”

In another videotaped interview, the former president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, testified to the committee that she respected Barr’s view that there was no election fraud.

Others showed leaders of the extremist Oath Keepers and Proud Boys preparing to storm the Capitol to stand up for Trump. One rioter after another told the committee they came to the Capitol because Trump asked them to.

“President Trump summoned a violent mob,” said Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the panel’s vice chair who took the lead for much of the hearing. “When a president fails to take the steps necessary to preserve our union — or worse, causes a constitutional crisis — we’re in a moment of maximum danger for our republic.”

There was an audible gasp in the hearing room when Cheney read an account that said when Trump was told the Capitol mob was chanting for Vice President Mike Pence to be hanged for refusing to block the election results. Trump responded that maybe they were right, that he “deserves it.”

At another point it was disclosed that Republican Representative Scott Perry, a leader of efforts to object to the election results, had sought a pardon from Trump, which would protect him from prosecution.

When asked about the White House lawyers threatening to resign over what was happening in the administration, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner scoffed they were “whining.”

Police officers who had fought off the mob consoled one another as they sat in the committee room reliving the violence they faced on January 6.

The riot left more than 100 police officers injured, many beaten and bloodied, as the crowd of pro-Trump rioters, some armed with pipes, bats and bear spray, charged into the Capitol. At least nine people who were there died during and after the rioting, including a woman who was shot and killed by police.

Biden, in Los Angeles for the Summit of the Americas, said many viewers were “going to be seeing for the first time a lot of the detail that occurred.”

Trump, unapologetic, dismissed the investigation anew — and even declared on social media that January 6 “represented the greatest movement in the history of our country.”

Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee tweeted: “All. Old. News.”

Emotions are still raw at the Capitol, and security was tight. Law enforcement officials are reporting a spike in violent threats against members of Congress.

Against this backdrop, the committee was speaking to a divided America. Most TV networks carried the hearing live, but Fox News Channel did not.

Among those testifying was documentary maker Nick Quested, who filmed the Proud Boys storming the Capitol — along with a pivotal meeting between the group’s then-chairman Henry “Enrique” Tarrio and another extremist group, the Oath Keepers, the night before in a nearby parking garage.

Court documents show that members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers were discussing as early as November a need to fight to keep Trump in office. Leaders of both groups and some members have since been indicted on rare sedition charges over the military-style attack.

In the weeks ahead, the panel is expected to detail Trump’s public campaign to “Stop the Steal” and the private pressure he put on the Justice Department to reverse his election loss — despite dozens of failed court cases attesting there was no fraud on a scale that could have tipped the results in his favor.

The panel faced obstacles from its start. Republicans blocked the formation of an independent body that could have investigated the January 6 assault the way the 9/11 Commission probed the 2001 terror attack.

Instead, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ushered the creation of the 1/6 panel through Congress and rejected Republican-appointed lawmakers who had voted on January 6 against certifying the election results, eventually naming seven Democrats and two Republicans.

The Justice Department has arrested and charged more than 800 people for the violence that day, the biggest dragnet in its history.

Letitia James, Donald Trump

A judge ruled Thursday that former President Donald Trump must answer questions under oath in New York state’s civil investigation into his business practices.

The Associated Press reports Judge Arthur Engoron ordered Trump and his two eldest children, Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr., to comply with subpoenas issued in December by New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Trump and his two children must sit for depositions within 21 days, Engoron said following a two-hour hearing with lawyers for the Trumps and James’ office.

Engoron wrote in his decision, “In the final analysis, a State Attorney General commences investigating a business entity, uncovers copious evidence of possible financial fraud, and wants to question, under oath, several of the entities’ principals, including its namesake. She has the clear right to do so.”

The eight-page ruling is almost certain to be appealed, but if upheld it could force the former president into a tough decision about whether to answer questions, or stay silent, citing his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination — something he’s criticized others for doing in the past.

Trump, in a statement, accused James’ office of “doing everything within their corrupt discretion to interfere with my business relationships, and with the political process.”

Trump called the ruling “a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in history — and remember, I can’t get a fair hearing in New York because of the hatred of me by Judges and the judiciary. It is not possible.”

In her own statement, James said: “No one will be permitted to stand in the way of the pursuit of justice, no matter how powerful they are. No one is above the law.”

James, a Democrat, said her investigation has uncovered evidence Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, used “fraudulent or misleading” valuations of assets like golf courses and skyscrapers to get loans and tax benefits.

Trump’s lawyers told Engoron that having him sit for a civil deposition now, while his company is also the subject of a parallel criminal investigation, is an improper attempt to get around a state law barring prosecutors from calling someone to testify before a criminal grand jury without giving them immunity.

Anything Trump says in a civil deposition could be used against him in the criminal probe being overseen by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. If Trump invokes the Fifth Amendment, Trump’s attorney Ronald Fischetti said it could still hurt a potential criminal defense.

A lawyer for the attorney general’s office, Kevin Wallace, told Engoron that it wasn’t unusual to have civil and criminal investigations proceeding at the same time. The judge rejected a request from lawyers for the Trumps to pause the civil probe until the criminal matter is over.

At Thursday’s hearing, Trump lawyer Alina Habba accused James of “selective prosecution” and said the attorney general is “engaging in viewpoint discrimination” motivated by her political ambitions and disdain for the Republican former president, evinced by comments she made over the years about going after Trump.

Wallace noted the state attorney general’s office was investigating Trump-related matters as far back as 2013, long before James was elected, including probes into his charitable foundation and the Trump University training program.

Engoron said the thousands of pages of evidence he’s reviewed in the case shows there’s sufficient basis for continuing the investigation and undercuts “the notion that this ongoing investigation is based on personal animus, not facts and law.”

Engoron also seized on the revelation this week that Trump’s longtime accounting firm sent a letter advising him to no longer rely on years of financial statements it prepared based on his company’s valuations, given questions about their accuracy.

Engoron described the letter as a “red-flag warning that the Trump financial statements are unreliable” and criticized Trump’s company for its contention, in a statement to the news media, that because the accounting firm did not conclude there were material discrepancies in the documents, James’ investigation should be shut down. That claim, he wrote, “is as audacious as it is preposterous.”

Letitia James, Donald Trump

New York Attorney General Letitia James has issued subpoenas to Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr., as part of an ongoing fraud inquiry examining the operations of former President Donald Trump‘s namesake real estate business.

USA Today reports the action was disclosed in court documents filed Monday in connection with the civil investigation focusing on whether the Trump Organization claimed false property valuations in its dealings with lenders and taxing authorities.

A lawyer for the Trump children declined comment Monday.

The move comes as the attorney general also is seeking the testimony of the former president.

The civil investigation has been running parallel to a criminal inquiry led by both James and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.

So far, the joint investigation has resulted in criminal tax evasion charges against Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer.

Last year, state prosecutors alleged that the Trump Organization and Weisselberg participated in an “off the books” compensation operation that funded luxury car leases, family members’ tuition payments and apartment rent starting in 2005 and running through this year.

James first launched her investigation after former Trump attorney Michael Cohen told federal lawmakers in 2019 that Donald Trump regularly inflated the value of his properties and his net worth to get better insurance and loan rates.

In May, the attorney general announced that her office was joining forces with the Manhattan district attorney.