Judge orders Trump to pay for missing evidence

Lina PortmanMay 27, 2024

0 3 minutes read

A New York judge has ordered former President Donald Trump to immediately pay the $110,000 he owes for refusing to provide evidence to the state attorney general in an ongoing investigation, but The judge also proposed no longer pursuing Trump “for contempt of court” if there may be claims about how his family business retains and destroys documents.

“I want the fine paid,” Judge Arthur F. Engoron said, warning that he would immediately resanction the former president if additional documents were not turned over to him.

Because so many electronic devices and documents are missing, his executive assistant at the Trump Organization must now submit an affidavit explaining how the company maintains and destroys documents. The judge also wants to hear about ongoing evidence-gathering efforts by the third-party company he felt compelled to entrust following the Trump Organization's two-year refusal to turn over documents demanded by the New York AG Letitia James.

Trump Organization accused of hiding witness who knew if Trump lied

The $110,000 will be held in escrow, pending further questions in the legal fight between the AG's office and the Trump Organization. Trump is racking up $10,000 a day for refusing to provide evidence.

During Wednesday's virtual hearing, Trump's lawyers clashed with attorneys from the AG's office over whether investigators are getting the evidence they need to make a final decision on whether to sue the company for commercial and tax fraud.

The state AG's office has been investigating the company for years and is close to taking action that could ban the company from operating. The investigation is intensifying in what could be its final chapter, and real estate giant Cushman & Wakefield is now under scrutiny for allegedly helping the company inflate property values.

Although the investigation is a civil matter, investigators are simultaneously conducting a parallel criminal investigation with the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, which has already led to tax fraud indictments against the company and its now former chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg .

Andrew Amer, an attorney in the AG's office, noted that investigators are still missing a ton of evidence they were waiting for. For example, Trump regularly communicates with his aides by handing them Post-It notes, but investigators found none.

Judge asks Trump Organization to stop procrastinating on disclosure of evidence

“We haven’t seen any documents with Post-It notes,” he said. “You can’t say you’re complying with the subpoena.”

Meanwhile, Trump lawyer Alina Habba argued that investigators continue to request more records and additional assurances.

“This is not a dive into everything the president has ever done. This is a narrow area of inquiry that the Attorney General’s Office is investigating,” she said. “It feels like the ball keeps moving and expanding and changing. Everything you asked, we did. We complied.

Donald Trump's legal team claimed in court filings last week that they searched desks, drawers and filing cabinets at the former president's Mar-a-Lago club in South Florida, from its New Jersey golf club in Bedminster and its headquarters in New York. at Trump Tower.

In an affidavit that Trump personally signed on May 6, he explained that he could not provide potentially vital evidence of his business dealings on all the cell phones he has used since 2010 because at least three d 'among them have disappeared. Gone are two flip phones, a Trump Organization phone he bought in 2015 and a Samsung smartphone.

“I took the Samsung with me to the White House and it was taken away from me at one point while I was president,” he vowed. “I do not have the Samsung in my possession and I do not know where it is currently.”

He could have brought down the Trump Org. Now he's the one taking the blame.

At Wednesday's hearing, Engoron challenged a statement in that affidavit regarding Trump's use of the technology. Trump claimed that “it was my practice not to communicate via email, text, or other digital means of communication,” but the judge pointed out how wrong that phrase was.

“You can’t make a statement that doesn’t stand on its own. When he says he doesn't use electronic means of communication…we all know he does. 80 million people were on his Twitter feed,” he said. “A sentence must be true. That sentence just isn't true…it stuck out like a sore thumb. “No, I don’t.” Yes, it's true !

Habba countered that his client's past activity on Twitter should not be taken into account because it was already public. And she explained that a new phone he had recently received solely to post on his own new social media platform, Orwellianly titled Truth Social, would have no relevant content.