Bay Area Houston

I took another one for the team and read the 39 page summary judgement issue by the Judge in the New York case against Trump and Trump properties.

Background.
Trump is being sued by the New York Attorney General Leticia James. The suit has been on going for a year. Yesterday the Judge issued a summary judgement, ie the Judge concluded that the evidence was so overwhelming, that a jury trial was not necessary. [based upon my vast legal experience from Facebook U.] The trial will continue to determine how much Trump will have to pay to New York State. Here are the Cliff Notes of the ruling:

• The Judge was not happy with Trump’s lawyers: Defendants’ conduct in reiterating these frivolous arguments is egregious. We are way beyond the point of “sophisticated counsel should have known better”; we are at the point of intentional and blatant disregard of controlling authority and law of the case.
• Judge sanctioned his attorney’s for their frivolous arguments of $7500 each.
• OAG has submitted conclusive evidence that between 2014 and 2021, defendants overvalued the assets reported in the SFCs [Statements of Financial Condition] between 17.27-38.51%; this amounts to a discrepancy of between $812 million and $2.2 billion dollars.
• Accordingly, defendants” motion for summary judgment dismissing every cause of action is denied in its entirety.
• The Trump Tower apartment in which Donald Trump resided for decades (the “TriplexTM) is 10,996 square feet. Between 2012- 2016, Donald Trump submitted SFCs [Statements of Financial Condition] falsely claiming that the Triplex was 30,000 square feet, resulting in an overvaluation of between $114-207 million dollars. “A discrepancy of this order of magnitude, by a real estate developer sizing up his own living space of decades, can only be considered fraud.'”
• OAG demonstrates that as of 2012, no apartment sold in New York City had ever approached the price at which defendants valued the Triplex, noting that the highest overall sale at that time was $88 million for a Central Park West penthouse. The SFCs valued the Triplex at a staggering $180,000,000- $327,000,000fortheyears2012-2016.
• Notwithstanding receiving market values from professional appraisals in 2000, 2006, 2012, and 2014 valuing Seven Springs at or below $30 million, Donald Trump’s 2011 SFC reported the value to be $261 million, and his 2012, 2013 and 2014 SFCs reported the value to be $291 million.
• Trump Organization submitted SFCs that valued these rent-restricted units [Trump Park Avenue ] as if they were unencumbered, inflating the value of each unit between as much 700% (in 2014) and 64% (in 2021).
• Despite these appraisals, the 2011 and 2012 SFCs valued the Trump Organization’s interest in the property [40 Wall Street] at $524.7 million and $527.2 million, respectively, an overvaluation of more than $300 million each year.!
• Donald Trump’s SFCs for 2011-2021 value Mar-a-Lago at between $426,529,614 million and $612,110,496, an overvaluation of at least 2,300%, compared to the assessor’s appraisal. 
• AnApril2014appraisalvaluedthegolfclubportionofTNGC Briarcliffat$16,500,000;later that same year, Donald Trump valued the golf club portion of TNGC Briarcliff at $73,430,217, an inflation of more than 300%, in his SFC.
• Cushman & Wakefield appraised the value of 1290 AOA at $2 billion However, Donald Trump’s 2014 SFC calculated his 30% share based on a purported value of $3,078,338,462; his 2015 SFC was based on a purported value of $2,985,819,936; and his 2016 SFC was based on a purported value of $3,055,000,000. This resulted in overvaluations of Donald Trump’s 30% interest in 1290 AOA of between $205-$233 million dollars for those years.
• Improperly including these intra-organization deals [Real Estate Licensing Deals] resulted in an overvaluation of up to $224 million in 2014, $110 million in 2015, $120 million in 2016, $113 million in 2017, $115 million in 2018, $97 million in 2020, and $106 million in 2021.
• Defendants have continued to disseminate false and misleading information while conducting business. This ongoing flouting of this Court’s prior order, combined with the persistent nature of the false SFCs year after year, have demonstrated the necessity of canceling the certificates filed under GBL § 130, as the statute provides.
• The Trump Organization has been cancelled in New York

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 27th, 2023 at 6:50 am and is filed under Political. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.