As we reported the attorney general of New York is suing former President
Donald Trump and his private company for financial fraud are John
Yang has more on the latest development in Mr Trump's legal battles.
Judy, New York Attorney general Leticia James Civil suit alleges
that the former president and executives of the Trump Organization,
including his three oldest Children, lied to bankers and insurers
for years by inflating the value of their real estate holdings in
violation of new
York State law.
James can't bring criminal charges in this case, but suggests that
federal laws may have been broken as well. She's referred the case
to the U. S attorney's office in Manhattan. And to the I R s. We
looked at two aspects of this with Andrea Bernstein, who covers the
former president's legal issues for NPR. And Jessica Roth, a former
federal prosecutor. Now a professor at the Cardozo School of Law.
Thanks to you both for joining us, Andrea Let me begin with you.
You have watched these investigations.
Of the former president closely for a while now.
To you. What is the significance of what happened today?
Well, I think what was really striking was to hear today. The New
York attorney general say aloud that this had been a pattern and
practice of the Trump Organization for you put it in her complaint,
at least a decade that is take Trump's apartment in Trump Tower.
According to the complaint, the apartment was valued for an apartment
three times its size, a $200 million difference, making it valued
at the time for the most expensive apartment in New York City.
According to the attorney general. What the president did is then
take this two bakers and say, I have all this money and get more
favorable rates. Well, this happened, according to the complaint
over 200 times, it was central to Trump's business model. It was
a pattern of fraud that went on and on and on Jessica Roth theories
or referral to the U. S Attorney's office and for the Southern District
of New York. You worked in that office. What typically happens when
A referral comes over like this.
Well, the U. S Attorney's office will make an independent assessment
of the evidence. It would also conduct its own investigation and
would make a determination about whether there is enough evidence
to proceed with criminal charges. The burden of proof in a criminal
case is considerably higher than the burden in a civil case, the
burden the criminal cases, proof beyond a reasonable doubt. And so
even if all the allegations in this complaint or accepted as true,
the U. S attorney would have to be satisfied that he'd be able to
pursue
Wait a jury unanimously beyond a reasonable doubt of criminal intent
by each of the individuals alleged here, not just the corporation.
Andrea Bernstein. We've said that the trump reaction to this has
been is that this is a political witch hunt. The former president
did respond on the truth, Social media Social media site in a political
way, he said Attorney General Laetitia Peekaboo James, a total crime
fighting disaster in New York.
Is spending all of her time fighting for very powerful and well representative
banks and insurance companies who were fully paid, made a lot of
money and never had a complaint about me. Instead of fighting murder
and violent crime, which is killing New York state. Now the attorney
general has emerged as sort of the one of the leading antagonists
of the former president. She's a Democrat. She was talking about
running for governor for a while.
What role does politics or is politics playing in all of this In
your view?
Well, according to the judge in this investigation, it doesn't matter.
This has been a running argument that's been going on since January
in New York State Supreme Court whether the attorney general was
entitled to get information from the former president's company,
or whether she is just trying to get it to embarrass the former president
and his company, and what the judge in the case is rolled is it doesn't
matter that the New York attorney general is it is a Democrat. It
doesn't matter that she talked when she was running for office about
investigating Trump. What matters are the
The facts and the law. And this case has already survived several
hurdles and in New York in a civil case like this case is already
quite advanced. The attorney general has gotten a lot of information,
a million millions of pages of documents, she said. She, of course,
we all remember interviewed the former president. He took the Fifth
Amendment 500 Times talked about that in her press conference today,
so the case is far along and the evidence is out there, and a judge
has said politics doesn't matter. It's going to be
Tested in the courts and Andrea Real estate valuations are often
subjective. So how
How is what's being alleged in this civil suit? How out of the ordinary
is this for real estate?
Right. So I've covered Trump's business for a long, long time. And
I've covered real estate in New York for a long time. And certainly
there is a lot of certain puffery about what the value of a property
maybe. But what the attorney general was saying is this was so far
out of bounds hundreds of millions of dollars in individual cases,
adding up to more than a billion dollars that there were actual victims.
The taxpayers of New York who work didn't get the taxes they were
entitled to Banks. Insurance come
Open ease, and that, she says, is something that if you were an average
person, you lied in a bank application. You could be liable for that.
She's saying it doesn't matter if you're you're the former president.
You should be too. Jessica Wrath. Andrea talks about the puffery
and real estate. When you talked to us earlier you talked about these
allegations and claims being objectively verifiable and you talked
about the importance of that. Explain what you meant by that.
Yeah, because I think that the attorney general anticipated that
the defense here was likely to be that these are the kinds of practices
that are routinely engaged in in the real estate industry. I think
she was wise to make her allegations as concrete as possible and
grounded in representations that were made that could be shown to
be objectively false. So, for example, the square footage that Andrea
talked about, for example of the former president apartment that
was grossly inflated.
Some of the statements. That's an objective fact. What's the square
footage of the apartment? So things like that or whether or not statements
were prepared with the input of outside professionals that can be
verified whether in fact outside professionals, um gave their sanction
to the statements and according to the allegations in the complaint,
some of those outside professionals were interviewed by the attorney
general, and they did not provide input of the kind that's described
in the statements were sanctioned them in.
Anyway, So that's what I mean. That is. It's smart as a as a litigation
strategy to stick to facts that can be verified and proven to be
false. And Jessica Roth based on the allegations in this suit.
What? What potential
federal, uh, charges do you see possible here?
Well. They include the charges that are actually mentioned in a footnote
in this complaint, including wire fraud and bank fraud, so those
would involve frauds committed upon financial institutions, Banks
and use of the wires in furtherance of any other kind of fraud could
include the bank fraud conclude insurance fraud. And so anytime interstate
wires are used to further a scheme to defraud, that can count as
as wire fraud under the federal statute.
So that's what the U S attorney is going to be looking at. In addition
to the evidence, What are the federal statutes that may have been
violated here?
Former federal prosecutor, Jessica Roth, now at Cardozo Law School,
and Andrea Bernstein of NPR. Thank you very much.