Former President Donald Trump is known to throw insults at his rivals but isn’t one who ever likes to be on the receiving end. During the 2016 presidential campaign, he was often quite defensive when it came to suggestions that he has small hands – which some read could be an indicator of something else that we’ll leave to the imagination.
However, Trump has been known to brag about the size of something that isn’t his hands (or that other thing) – rather, it is his worth. Though that normally is no worse than exaggerating the length of one’s fingers, on Friday, New York Attorney General Letitia James alleged in a new filing that the former president has inflated his net worth by billions of dollars more than what the AG’s office found to be the case.
James’ office suggested that Trump’s net worth in any given year between 2011 and 2021 was overstated by $1.9 billion to $3.6 billion. The AG wrote that experts accepted at face value many of the elements of Trump’s financial statements “that would otherwise be rejected in a full-blown appraisal review.”
Creative Accounting?
Trump, his eldest sons, his business, and some of its top executives are part of New York’s $250 million civil lawsuit – which Trump and others have denied any wrongdoing. However, the AG’s office had previously said that the inflated asset values by hundreds of millions of dollars each year by adding square footage that did not exist, flouting development restrictions, or disregarding appraisals that came in lower than expected.
In total, the AG’s office estimated that Trump overstated his net worth between 17 percent and 39 percent, depending on the year. James had previously claimed in a filing that Trump and his associates were involved in “numerous deceptive schemes” that were meant to inflate his total assets, which had a “staggering” cumulative effect.
The trial is now scheduled to begin on Oct. 2. A hearing on whether to grant either side’s motion for summary judgment is scheduled for Sept. 22, ABC News reported.
However, on Wednesday, Judge Arthur Engoron rejected Trump’s bid to delay the trial, calling the request “completely without merit.” Engoron said the trial date would not change “come hell or high water.”
Donald Trump: Other Legal Woes
This is just the first of three major civil cases the former president is now facing in New York City.
Writer E. Jean Carroll has sued Trump for defamation, with a civil trial set to begin on January 15. On Wednesday, a federal judge ruled that the former president is civilly liable for defamatory statements he made about writer Carroll in 2019, the year in which she went public with her claims that he had sexually assaulted her in a New York City department store decades earlier.
U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan said that a federal jury’s verdict against Trump earlier this year will carry over to the defamation case that is set to go to trial in January. As a result, Carroll’s defamation lawsuit will only need to determine how much money the former president will have to pay her.
Trump is also subject to a federal class-action lawsuit after a group of anonymous investors accused him and his company of promoting an illegal pyramid scheme on “The Apprentice.”
He is also facing four separate criminal cases, where he has been indicted on a total of 91 charges, including 44 federal charges and 47 state charges.
Author Experience and Expertise
A Senior Editor for 19FortyFive, Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu.
