N.Y. AG says she has 'significant evidence' Trump Organization misstated asset values

March 29 (UPI) -- The New York attorney general's office said it has "uncovered significant evidence" that the Trump Organization relied on misleading valuations of its real estate assets to "secure economic benefits" for more than a decade.

In a court filing late Monday, the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James said that the company owned by former President Donald Trump used misleading valuations and "other misrepresentations" to secure benefits such as "loans, insurance coverage and tax deductions -- on terms more favorable than the facts warranted.

"These misrepresentations appear to have been aimed at portraying Mr. Trump's net worth and liquidity as higher than the true facts warranted, to secure economic benefits to which Mr. Trump might not otherwise have been entitled," the filing states.

In one instance, the Trump Organization's 2010-2012 statements "collectively valued" rent-stabilized apartment units owned at $49.59 million, more than 66 times the $750,000 total value an outside appraiser assigned to the units, according to the filing.

In a period spanning 2012-2016, the Trump Organization's financial statements said Trump's triplex apartment in Trump Tower in Manhattan "exceeded 30,000 square feet, and valued the apartment at up to $327 million based on those dimensions," the filing said.

However, in 2017 -- Trump's first year as president -- the filing noted that the company "slashed the apartment's value by two-thirds, sizing the residence at just under 11,000 square feet," consistent with the figure specified in the offering plan for the building.

Monday's filing came in response to an appeal by the Trump Organization and Trump of an order by a Manhattan state court judge directing his adult children Donald Trump Jr., who runs the business along with his brother Eric Trump, and Ivanka Trump, who previously served as a company executive, to hold interviews with James' investigators.

The filing also notes that from 2011 to 2013, Ivanka Trump held an option to buy the Trump Park Avenue penthouse, where she lived, for $8.5 million, while the Trump Organization valued the unit at up to $25 million.

Similarly, in 2014 she acquired an option to buy a larger apartment for $14.3 million when the ensuing year's statement lowered the apartment's value from its previously assigned $45 million.

James, who has concurrent civil and criminal investigations into the Trump Organization ongoing, said that she issued the subpoenas to "help reach a final determination about whether there has been civil fraud" committed in connection with the asset valuations as well as "who may be responsible for such fraud."

Lawyers for Trump and his children earlier this year argued that testimony in the civil case could be used against them in the criminal case, and that allowing such testimony without providing protections that New York law would require if they testified before a grand jury in a criminal case would set a "dangerous precedent."

James' office, however, countered that "civil subpoenas do not compel appellants to provide information that may be used against them in a future criminal case."