Trump Family Runs Out of Time as Judge Ratchets Up Pressure in Fraud Case
The deadline for Donald Trump and others involved in a tax fraud lawsuit against the Trump Organization to confirm under oath that they have handed over all necessary documents ahead of the upcoming trial has now passed.
New York Attorney General Letitia James' lawsuit alleges the company inflated or undervalued the worth of a number of assets for financial benefit.
In April, New York Judge Arthur Engoron ordered the former president and others who are named in James' $250 million lawsuit—Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric Trump plus two senior executives at the family real estate business —to complete by May 12 the process known as discovery by handing over information and evidence that will be used against them in trial.
Engoron also gave each defendant a deadline of Monday, May 15, to submit a compliance affidavit to confirm to the court they had complied with their legal obligations to hand over the requested information under the discovery process, which includes every email address, telephone number or other electronic account used for communications concerning the business of the Trump Organization.
James' office previously wrote to Engoron in late April to ask him to intervene after the Trump family had failed to hand over emails and other communications as part of the fraud lawsuit, including an "unexplained drop-off" in emails for Ivanka Trump between 2014 and 2017.
The discovery and compliance affidavit are common processes of any lawsuit. However, this is not the first time in this case that Engoron has taken steps to ensure Trump does not delay or frustrate legal proceedings.
In May 2022, Trump was fined $110,000 for refusing to comply with a subpoena issued by James' office as part of her tax fraud suit. At the time, Trump was being fined $10,000 a day for not complying with the subpoena, but was released from the judicial order by Engoron on the condition that he pay a $110,000 fine, as well as meet a number of other conditions such as providing details of the Trump Organization's document retention and destruction policy.
Trump had actually accumulated $160,000 in daily fines, but Engoron did not fine him the total amount as the former president's lawyers had submitted 66 pages of court documents last May 6 to show they were trying to locate the subpoenaed records.
"The process is easy for most litigants—you turn over responsive information in your files to the other side and the case moves forward. But it's the part where Trump seems to have repeatedly stumbled," legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance wrote in her blog discussing the May 15 deadline.
"And judges seem to be getting wiser about repeated efforts to manipulate the system. This is the part of the process where the Trumps have to act like any other litigants in a civil matter and turn over discovery," Vance said. "Requiring a statement filed under oath is a strong signal he means business."
Vance also noted that it was Trump and his legal team's false assurance that all classified documents that were removed from The White House in 2021 had been returned under subpoena to the federal government that resulted in the Department of Justice stepping up its search and the FBI raiding Trump's Mar-a-Lago home in August 2022, where further top secret materials were recovered.
In April, Trump spent several hours answering questions under oath as part of his deposition in James' tax fraud lawsuit.
During his previous deposition hearing in August 2022, Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination hundreds of times rather than answering the questions.
Trump's legal team and James' office have been contacted for comment.
