- NY AG Letitia James says she will agree to remove contempt of court order against Donald Trump.
- The order has cost Trump $110,000 in court-imposed fines for failing to fully comply with his subpoena for his documents.
- James promised to allay “concerns” over how many business documents Trump has overturned.
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New York Attorney General Letitia James said Tuesday that she would agree to remove a contempt order against former President Donald Trump, according to a new court filing.
The order has cost the former president $110,000 in court-ordered fines — his fine for failing to fully comply with James’ subpoenas for his personal business documents.
But James’ office — which is closing a 3-year investigation into Trump’s hotel and golf resort business — is now asking “what more, if anything” to force Trump to either do more documents or turn to a more thorough one. But an impasse has been reached. The filing asks to explain why so few have been changed.
The Manhattan-based Trump Organization has submitted nearly 900,000 documents, totaling 6 million pages, in compliance with James’ subpoena. But only 10 of those documents – about 500 pages – were so-called Trump “custodial” documents containing his instructions or approval, the AG has complained.
The lack of personal documents of Trump has been a major sticking point.
Several Trump employees have testified under summons before the AG’s office, and have said that computer-contrast Trump routinely uses hand-written commands—directives or approvals either directly on documents or on Post-It notes. Are written – in running your business.
James’ office continues to have “separation concerns” about how some of Trump’s documents have been altered in response to James’ summons, the filing says, warning, “this is something [Office of the Attorney General] Will talk to the court separately.”
“We are ready to agree” the order is being lifted, “because it is unclear what, if anything, [Trump] and his counsel may now be ordered to do so which shall shed any additional light on the retention or destruction of [Trump’s] documents,” AG special counsel Andrew Amer wrote in the filing.
New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Angoron, the Manhattan judge who presides over the AG’s investigation, has yet to set a court date for potentially lifting the contempt order.
A $110,000 check to James’ office is being kept in escrow while Trump appeals a contempt of court order.
His lawyer, Alina Habba, repeatedly insisted that his client and his business have no further documents to proceed, and the continuation of the contempt order – which threatened hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional fines – was inappropriate.
Habba did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The AG is investigating what its office has called a pattern of raising or lowering the values of its properties to Trump by pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks and loans over the past decade. Trump has denied wrongdoing in his business and called the investigation a politically biased “witch hunt.”
