Did the former US president’s company misjudge its assets to get cheap loans and tax breaks? This allegation is no longer just being investigated under civil law in New York.
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Former US President Donald Trump is coming under more legal pressure. The New York public prosecutor announced that they are now also investigating his company under criminal law. “We have informed the Trump Organization that our investigation is no longer just civil,” said a spokesman for Letitia James, attorney general for New York state. Now it is also about possible crimes that are being investigated together with the prosecutor in the New York borough of Manhattan. The spokesman did not provide any further details.
Manhattan prosecutor Cyrus Vance is also investigating the alleged hush money payments that Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen is said to have given two women. Both had stated that they had an affair with Trump, which the former president denied.
In the meantime, however, the prosecutors’ investigations have expanded. They are now investigating the Trump Group’s business conduct and are investigating the allegation that it provided false information about its property and assets in order to secure lines of credit and receive tax breaks.
The investigation began after Trump’s former attorney Cohen testified before the US Congress in 2019 that Trump inflated the value of his property to get cheap credit, but then lowered the value to pay less tax. The Manhattan District Attorney has also had tax records from the former US President since February. Trump had vainly fought against handing them over legally.
A lawyer for the Trump Organization declined to comment on the expansion of the investigation at the request of the broadcaster CNN. Trump himself had described the investigations in New York as politically motivated in the past.
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