Ex-president to be questioned in $250m suit against him for allegedly inflating assets to gain favorable loans and tax benefits
Former US president Donald Trump was back in New York on Thursday to give a deposition in the state civil case accusing him of business fraud, as his legal woes continued to multiply.
Trump arrived in New York a little over a week after appearing in New York criminal court on a different matter, pleading not guilty to dozens of felony charges related to hush-money payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels and others during the 2016 presidential election.
He stayed at his Trump Tower skyscraper on Fifth Avenue near Central Park on Wednesday night and on Thursday prepared to answer questions behind closed doors in a $250m civil fraud lawsuit brought against him by the state’s attorney general, Letitia James.
Trump noted as much in a series of overnight social media posts that also lashed out against the case.
“I will finally be able to show what a great, profitable, and valuable company I built,” Trump said in one post on his Truth Social platform early on Thursday, after attacking the attorney general and what he called her “persecution”.
James’s lawsuit against Trump accuses him and others of a decade-long scheme to manipulate property values and his own net worth in order to obtain favorable loans and tax benefits.
The lawsuit alleges that Trump misled banks and others about the value of his assets, including allegedly fraudulently inflating the value of 23 properties including his Florida Mar-a-Lago resort, Trump Tower and what was previously the Trump International Hotel, in Washington DC.
“The complaint demonstrates that Donald Trump falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to unjustly enrich himself and to cheat the system, thereby cheating all of us.
