The Daily Fuckup

New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a civil fraud lawsuit on September 21, 2022, accusing Donald Trump, the Trump Organization, and several family members and executives of a long-running scheme to inflate the value of assets and mislead banks, insurers, and tax authorities. The complaint says the conduct stretched across annual financial statements from 2011 through 2021 and involved more than 200 false or misleading asset valuations. ([ag.ny.gov](https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2022/attorney-general-james-sues-donald-trump-years-financial-fraud?utm_source=openai))

James said the case seeks to stop Trump and other defendants from serving in top roles at New York companies, impose limits on the Trump Organization’s ability to buy commercial real estate and borrow from New York-registered lenders, and recover about $250 million tied to the alleged scheme. The complaint was filed after a multi-year investigation and included examples involving Trump Tower, Trump Park Avenue, 40 Wall Street, Mar-a-Lago, and other properties. ([ag.ny.gov](https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2022/attorney-general-james-sues-donald-trump-years-financial-fraud?utm_source=openai))

The attorney general’s office said the statements at issue violated generally accepted accounting principles and relied on shifting methods, unsupported assumptions, and valuations that ignored basic restrictions on the properties. In its filing, the office said Trump and his company used those statements to obtain favorable lending and insurance terms. ([ag.ny.gov](https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2022/attorney-general-james-sues-donald-trump-years-financial-fraud?utm_source=openai))

Trump denied wrongdoing and cast the lawsuit as political. The filing itself, though, locked the accusations into a public court record and set the state’s civil fraud case on a formal track. ([ag.ny.gov](https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2022/attorney-general-james-sues-donald-trump-years-financial-fraud?utm_source=openai))