When Donald Trump needed to value his Trump Tower apartment for homeowner's insurance in 2010, he personally showed an appraiser around the unit for 15 minutes but ushered him out before the expert could take any measurements. Trump's company then declared that the 11,000-square-foot unit measured 30,000 square feet, nearly three times its actual size.
A few years later, expert appraisers told Trump his 70-story office building at 40 Wall Street in Manhattan, steps from the New York Stock Exchange, was worth $260 million. But Trump soon claimed in financial documents that it was worth nearly $530 million, more than doubling its value.
In 2018, while he was president, Trump's company cited a seasoned New York valuation expert to claim in its financial statements that Niketown, a luxury retail store adjoining Manhattan's Trump Tower that has since closed, was worth $445 million. The expert later told investigators he'd provided no such input and Trump's process to arrive at the figure didn't "make any sense."
Those details are drawn from thousands of pages of court documents prepared by New York Attorney General Letitia James as evidence in the fraud case she has filed against Trump. The documents show how accounting, banking and real estate experts repeatedly informed Trump how much his properties and businesses were really worth. But over and over again, the documents reveal that Trump, his adult sons and top executives allegedly ignored or sidelined those experts, exchanging their figures for numbers from another source: Trump's own intuition.
Over more than four decades as a developer, Trump — now the leading candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination — has routinely exaggerated how much he and his assets are worth, while minimizing or omitting liabilities and debts. These self-aggrandizing boasts were central to the reputation he cultivated as a real estate mogul.
The civil trial against Trump's business that on Tuesday enters its second week threatens to reveal the internal workings of Trump's business in never-before-revealed detail. James, an elected Democrat, and her team arrived at trial armed after having reviewed millions of pages of documents about him and his company, a trove of legal ammunition that will be detailed in court in coming weeks.
Trump has called the James case "a pure witch hunt with the purpose of interfering with the elections of the United States of America." His lawyers have said the company's practices were not illegal.Trump attorney Christopher Kise told the judge last week that "there was no nefarious intent" in putting company statements together, and subsequently there "was no illegality, there was no fraud, there are no victims."
James's office has been investigating Trump's business for more than four-and-a-half years, using a team of lawyers and forensic accountants to acquire documents through subpoenas to his company, banks, insurers and business partners, many of which would otherwise have remained confidential.
The attorney general's team by the time the lawsuit was filed interviewed 65 witnesses, including his adult children and nearly all of his closest business confidants.
That includes individuals with knowledge of intimate details of his business who managed to remain out of the limelight during Trump's presidency, but who were compelled to provide lengthy depositions for the first time in the case and are now prepared to testify against him and his company during the coming weeks and months.
The case is expected to feature Trump's own testimony. Attorneys on the case will also point to a deposition Trump sat for after initially avoiding questions by invoking his Fifth Amendment right not to answer questions for fear of self incrimination more than 400 times, using it for every question.
"Appraisers are right and wrong. Everybody knows that," he said during an April session with James's office, according to a transcript of the deposition filed with the court. He then defended making estimates based on gut instincts.
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