New York judge assigns monitor to oversee Trump Organization’s financial statements, but a new lawsuit asks the judge to dismiss it as a fishing expedition.
This story has been corrected to state that Trump’s company has made no payments to his personal bank account, rather than an individual bank account, on $2.5 billion of loans to its business empire.
A federal judge in New York said Wednesday that he was assigning a U.S. monitor to oversee Donald Trump’s finances, including his company’s $2.5 billion debt owed to banks.
Lawyers for the president also asked Judge Victor Marrero to dismiss a suit filed by the New York attorney general, accusing Trump of fraud over the financing.
In a letter, the lawyers asked Marrero to dismiss the suit, arguing that they “have no basis for believing that defendants have committed any fraud, nor do they allege any facts to support such a claim.”
The lawsuit seeks an accounting of Trump’s businesses for the last three years. The attorney general said in the lawsuit that a forensic audit is “necessary for the court to determine the truth behind the veracity of the president of the United States.”
Marrero said he will decide on a monitor by Friday.
He said he will consider granting a temporary restraining order to stop the foreclosure proceedings on the Trump Organization.
The president’s personal bank, Deutsche Bank, said in an email that it had notified the judge that no payments had been made to his personal account for the loans.
Trump spokesman Michael Cohen told The Washington Post on Wednesday that his company’s financial statements have been audited since 2009. “They are, to date, unqualified for any audits or reviews,” he said.
The attorney general said in a statement that his office needed to examine Trump’s finances to make sure his business deals did not violate New York’s tax laws. He added that the attorney general was going to request an accounting of Trump’s businesses’ financial statements for three years.
Marrero also said that he would consider issuing subpoenas for bank records, bank records relating to credit cards of people who attended Trump’s inauguration, and for other financial information of Trump’s properties.
The lawsuits have not been heard by a judge yet, and are unlikely to come before one. New York state law requires that lawsuits that do not involve claims against the state be heard in the state’s Supreme Court