The Trumps over the weekend appointed their accountant to serve as a court monitor after a former federal judge who babysat the Trump Organization exposed potential tax fraud at the company. I fought against it.
In an outraged court filing Monday morning, the Trumps’ lawyers launched their first full-scale attack on Judge Barbara S. Jones — calling her latest report on the family company an outright lie and calling the government as a cheap attempt to legitimize — a mandated job and a last-minute ploy to help the New York Attorney General’s bank fraud case that just concluded.
Referring to the fictional French law enforcement officer in Victor Hugo’s novel, he said, “further surveillance is unwarranted and that her involvement in a “Javert”-like quest is a threat to unjust enrichment.” Just let it happen,” he wrote. Les Miserables, He is defined by his relentless pursuit and lack of empathy.
The Trumps also complained about the $2.6 million they had to pay Ms. Jones for her work, completely ignoring her findings.
Clifford S. Robert, an attorney for the Trump family, wrote, “It is incredible that the watchdog is now trying to perpetuate this foolishness.”
The counterpunch comes days after Jones exposed former President Donald Trump’s bombshell statements about his finances. In preparation for AG’s case against the Trumps on charges of lying about real estate values, New York State Supreme Court Judge Arthur F. Engoron ordered the vast family company to avoid transferring or concealing assets. A court monitor was ordered to monitor the case. A huge judgment that could cripple a business empire. Since then, Mr. Jones has issued nearly half a dozen reports showing that almost everything is in order.
It comes as the Daily Beast first reported on Friday that she was accused of lying for years about President Trump allegedly making a personal loan to one of his companies. That was until I updated the paper. She avoids taxes on nearly $50 million in income.
“When I inquired about this loan, I was informed that although there is no loan agreement commemorating the loan, it appears to be a $48 million loan between Donald J. Trump personally and the Chicago Unit Acquisition Company. ” she wrote.
That little footnote became big news Friday afternoon. It came just as President Trump lost his second rape defamation case and was ordered to pay journalist E. Jean Carroll $83 million.
Lawyers for the Trumps rejected the report Monday morning, labeling her claims “patently false” and casting doubt on her ability to perform her duties.
“Of course, President Trump’s group never said the loan did not exist. Rather, they provided a copy of an internal memorandum that reflected only that there were ‘no outstanding debts or obligations’ based on the loan at the time.” “I did,” Robert wrote. “The monitor’s intentional misrepresentations cast further doubt on her competency and veracity.”
But the clear evidence the Trumps cited for that claim does not support that the loan ever existed.
The memo, an unsigned and vague “interagency memorandum” sent by the “Legal Department” to “submit” last month, describes an entirely different loan arrangement. The loan that President Trump listed in his presidential financial disclosure was a $48 million loan from his Chicago Unit Acquisition LLC to Trump personally. However, the memo states that the loan was from Chicago Unit Acquisition LLC to another entity called “401 Mezz Venture LLC.” The memo simply says the loan has been closed. There is no other explanation as to what happened to the $48 million.
“It is hereby confirmed that, as of the date hereof, there is no due or payable amount with respect to the above-mentioned loan, such loan is of no force or effect, and there are no outstanding debts or obligations.” ing. The filing also mentions “discussions” that Trump.org adviser Alan Garten had with Jones about the loan, but does not provide details about the nature of those conversations. Garten said in a call with The Daily Beast on Saturday that the loan was between Chicago Unit Acquisitions LLC and Trump personally, and that Trump lent the money to the LLC. repeatedly insisted.
However, Judge Engoron is likely to view this with suspicion. He has spent years forcing the Trumps to produce evidence and has seen documented evidence that the billionaire, who is the size of a Trump Tower triplex, is lying. , courts have repeatedly determined that their experts and testimony are unreliable. Moreover, the Trump Organization is currently mired in falsified internal documents regarding its legal operations and expenses. This is exactly why Mr. Trump is facing 34 felony charges from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office for concealing his sexual relationships. A trial with porn star Stormy Daniels is scheduled to begin in March.
The Trumps also hit back at Jones by hiring a certified public accountant to back up their claims that he’s got it all wrong. The certified public accountant wrote: Although included in these reports, the monitors did not identify financial reporting irregularities, suspicious activity, or suspected or actual misconduct. ”
But even that may not convince the judge. That’s because the statement was made by Jason Flemons, a certified public accountant who lost credibility after testifying in a recent bank fraud trial. Judge Engoron last month slammed the accountant, noting that Flemons “inexplicably” repeatedly contradicted himself and was willing to bend over backwards to appease Trump. Mr. Engoron was angry that Mr. Flemons continued to shield the Trump family, such as when he argued that basic accounting principles require that the present value of assets reflect future income at a discount. However, he did not admit that the Trump family violated the rules when they failed to do so.
So far, Jones’ original report has remained silent, revealing little of its spicy or sordid content. The closest they came to doing so was in November, when she caught Mr. Trump quietly moving $40 million from the Trump Organization into her personal bank account to cover a whopping $29 million in taxes. I witnessed it. However, there was still no suggestion of wrongdoing.
But Jones is unnerved by the latest reports, and the Trumps are desperate to free her.
In the final pages of Monday’s court filing, Roberts downplayed her nearly year-long investigation as nothing more than an expensive exercise in looking for small mistakes that served no purpose. And he called her latest discovery a “selfish exaggeration.”
“The monitor was paid more than $2.6 million to ‘reveal’ seven immaterial disclosure items, three unrelated discrepancies, and five administrative errors in the past 14 months,” he said. “There is,” he wrote. “Therefore, the courts must and should end this abusive and costly process.”
