Attorneys with New York Attorney General Letitia James’s office on April 4 requested the expansion of the monitorship on the Trump Organization, citing a perjury plea from one of the defendants.
In a separate letter, the state attorneys also objected to the stay of execution of former President Donald Trump’s $454 million judgment based on the $175 million bond posted.
A hearing has been scheduled for April 22 in New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron’s courtroom.
The attorney general sued Trump Organization executives in a civil case in 2022 for inflating figures on statements of financial condition from 2011 to 2021, defrauding lenders and insurers, and therefore the state.
President Trump, his sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., former comptroller Jeffrey McConney, and former CFO Allen Weisselberg were named defendants alongside several Trump Organization holding companies.
This February, Justice Engoron entered judgment including $464 million post-interest disgorgement, with the vast majority to be paid by President Trump, as well as some prohibitions on the defendants from doing business in the state, and the extension of an existing monitorship on Trump Organization by at least three years.
Mr. Weisselberg recently took a plea bargain in a separate criminal case against President Trump, and the deal involved pleading guilty to perjury in his testimony for the civil fraud.
State attorneys argue this warrants an investigation.
Kevin Wallace, senior enforcement counsel with the attorney general’s office, requested two changes to the monitorship order to allow the monitor—currently former judge Barbara Jones—to be allowed to share information with one party without the presence of the other.
The state noted that the monitor was already authorized to share information without both parties present under a November 2023 order, and requested the same language be present in the current order.
The state is also requesting that Ms. Jones be “directed to investigate certain issues surrounding the recent perjury plea by defendant Allen Weisselberg.”
During the trial, Mr. Weisselberg testified about the Trump Tower triplex penthouse, and the state is asking that Ms. Jones be tasked with reviewing the correspondence he mentioned.
The 10,000-square-foot was famously reported as 30,000 square feet in a Forbes article after Trump Organization executives made what they testified was a mistake. Forbes had matched the claims to city records and wrote that the Trump Organization was misrepresenting the size and value of the penthouse.
Mr. Weisselberg had emailed Forbes in 2016 regarding this square footage dispute, involved another employee to verify the figure, and affirmed the wrong number. He testified about this in a pre-trial deposition and on the witness stand.
The state argued that even after Mr. Weisselberg pleaded guilty to perjury, “Defendants still have not taken any steps to fulfill their affirmative obligation to take ‘reasonable remedial measures including, if necessary, disclosure to the tribunal.'”
The state asked that the monitor be authorized to collect files because it claims the defendants have “withheld relevant and responsive information.”
They would like Ms. Jones to review electronic files collected for production to the Manhattan District Attorney prosecuting the case in which Mr. Weisselberg took a plea deal, including why certain files were produced or not produced.
They requested this be done within two weeks.
In a separate letter, state attorneys objected to the “sufficiency” of the $175 million bond President Trump posted to stay judgment.
An appeals court had ruled that President Trump could post $175 million instead of the full $464 million after attorneys argued that it was a “practical impossibility” for sureties to fill a bond that large, explaining they had had weeks of negotiation with more than 30 sureties who would not take real estate as collateral.
State attorneys had argued that the defense did not provide details of why sureties would not fill the bond and suggested President Trump’s assets were not as valuable as he claimed.
President Trump took to social media to claim he had nearly $500 million in cash but wanted to use the money on his campaign, not have it tied up in an appeal.
The state is now protesting against the exception granted by the appeals court.
“Defendants or KSIC [Knight Specialty Insurance Company] shall file a motion to justify the surety within 10 days of the service of this notice, failing which the bond shall be without effect, except that the surety shall remain liable on the bond until a new undertaking is given and allowed,” the notice reads.
From The Epoch Times
