A civil case entering its second week in New York threatens to put on display unprecedented details about how Donald Trump’s business operated.
By Jonathan O'Connell
and
Shayna Jacobs
Updated October 10, 2023 at 10:09 a.m. EDT|Published October 10, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
When Donald Trump needed to value his Trump Tower apartment for homeowner’s insurance in 2010, he personally showed an appraiser around the unit for 15 minutes but ushered him out before the expert could take any measurements. Trump’s company then declared that the 11,000-square-foot unit measured 30,000 square feet, nearly three times its actual size.
A few years later, expert appraisers told Trump his 70-story office building at 40 Wall Street in Manhattan, steps from the New York Stock Exchange, was worth $260 million. But Trump soon claimed in financial documents that it was worth nearly $530 million, more than doubling its value.
In 2018, while he was president, Trump’s company cited a seasoned New York valuation expert to claim in its financial statements that Niketown, a luxury retail store adjoining Manhattan’s Trump Tower that has since closed, was worth $445 million. The expert later told investigators he’d provided no such input and Trump’s process to arrive at the figure didn’t “make any sense.”
Those details are drawn from thousands of pages of court documents prepared by New York Attorney General Letitia James as evidence in the fraud case she has filed against Trump. The documents show how accounting, banking and real estate experts repeatedly informed Trump how much his properties and businesses were really worth. But over and over again, the documents reveal that Trump, his adult sons and top executives allegedly ignored or sidelined those experts, exchanging their figures for numbers from another source: Trump’s own intuition.
Over more than four decades as a developer, Trump — now the leading candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination — has routinely exaggerated how much he and his assets are worth, while minimizing or omitting liabilities and debts. These self-aggrandizing boasts were central to the reputation he cultivated as a real estate mogul.
The civil trial against Trump’s business that on Tuesday enters its second week threatens to reveal the internal workings of Trump’s business in never-before-revealed detail. James, an elected Democrat, and her team arrived at trial armed after having reviewed millions of pages of documents about him and his company, a trove of legal ammunition that will be detailed in court in coming weeks.
Trump is separately facing four upcoming criminal trials: federal charges in D.C. and state charges in Georgia for allegedly trying to block the 2020 election results, federal charges in Florida for allegedly possessing classified documents after leaving office and obstructing government efforts to get them back; and state charges in New York for allegedly falsifying business records in connection to a hush money payment in 2016. He has denied all wrongdoing and called the James case “a pure witch hunt with the purpose of interfering with the elections of the United States of America.”
By Jonathan O'Connell
and
Shayna Jacobs
Updated October 10, 2023 at 10:09 a.m. EDT|Published October 10, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
When Donald Trump needed to value his Trump Tower apartment for homeowner’s insurance in 2010, he personally showed an appraiser around the unit for 15 minutes but ushered him out before the expert could take any measurements. Trump’s company then declared that the 11,000-square-foot unit measured 30,000 square feet, nearly three times its actual size.
A few years later, expert appraisers told Trump his 70-story office building at 40 Wall Street in Manhattan, steps from the New York Stock Exchange, was worth $260 million. But Trump soon claimed in financial documents that it was worth nearly $530 million, more than doubling its value.
In 2018, while he was president, Trump’s company cited a seasoned New York valuation expert to claim in its financial statements that Niketown, a luxury retail store adjoining Manhattan’s Trump Tower that has since closed, was worth $445 million. The expert later told investigators he’d provided no such input and Trump’s process to arrive at the figure didn’t “make any sense.”
Those details are drawn from thousands of pages of court documents prepared by New York Attorney General Letitia James as evidence in the fraud case she has filed against Trump. The documents show how accounting, banking and real estate experts repeatedly informed Trump how much his properties and businesses were really worth. But over and over again, the documents reveal that Trump, his adult sons and top executives allegedly ignored or sidelined those experts, exchanging their figures for numbers from another source: Trump’s own intuition.
Over more than four decades as a developer, Trump — now the leading candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination — has routinely exaggerated how much he and his assets are worth, while minimizing or omitting liabilities and debts. These self-aggrandizing boasts were central to the reputation he cultivated as a real estate mogul.
The civil trial against Trump’s business that on Tuesday enters its second week threatens to reveal the internal workings of Trump’s business in never-before-revealed detail. James, an elected Democrat, and her team arrived at trial armed after having reviewed millions of pages of documents about him and his company, a trove of legal ammunition that will be detailed in court in coming weeks.
Trump is separately facing four upcoming criminal trials: federal charges in D.C. and state charges in Georgia for allegedly trying to block the 2020 election results, federal charges in Florida for allegedly possessing classified documents after leaving office and obstructing government efforts to get them back; and state charges in New York for allegedly falsifying business records in connection to a hush money payment in 2016. He has denied all wrongdoing and called the James case “a pure witch hunt with the purpose of interfering with the elections of the United States of America.”
