The New York attorney general and Manhattan DA are separately investigating President Donald Trump and his company.
New York Attorney General Letitia James said Monday that her office is continuing to actively investigate the Trump Organization’s alleged inflation and deflation of property values to evade tax liability in the state and receive other financial benefits. James also said that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to allow the Manhattan District Attorney’s office to obtain eight years of former President Donald Trump’s income tax returns and other financial records as part of a criminal investigation would not affect her own ongoing civil probe. That ruling, issued Monday, “doesn’t change the tenor of our lawsuit,” James said in an interview for The New York Times’ DealBook DC Policy Project. “We will continue our investigation and upon completion we will announce our findings,” James said. James also said the Supreme Court’s ruling would not mean that her office would get Trump’s tax records from Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr., who is expected to receive them this week from the former president’s accounting firm through a grand jury subpoena. “There’s a wall of separation between the two offices,” she said. The Supreme Court, in its ruling, denied Trump’s request that it hear an appeal of lower court decisions upholding the legality of the subpoena, which was issued at Vance’s request. James noted that “we have obtained information on our own.” “We are reviewing tax information from the Trump Organization,” James said. That tax information, which could include property tax records, is distinct from the former president’s income tax returns, which he has always kept secret. There is overlap in the focus of the two probes, which are among the largest legal threats Trump faces a month after leaving the White House. Both investigations are looking at how the Trump Organization valued real estate assets for different kinds of transactions.
