NEW YORK — New York Attorney General Letitia James’ $250 million civil lawsuit against the Trump Organization got a green light Friday from a Manhattan judge who trashed the organization’s motion to dismiss the case.
“Reading these arguments was, to quote baseball sage Lawrence Peter (‘Yogi’) Berra, ‘Deja vu all over again,” wrote Justice Arthur Engoron in his nine-page rejection.
James filed the lawsuit in September, arguing that Donald Trump, his children and the Trump Organization committed fraud for years by lying to insurance companies, lenders, and tax officials by inflating the value of the organization’s real estate.
One month later, James claimed the Trump Organization was trying to dodge the suit. In November, Engoron made clear his displeasure and set a trial date of Oct. 2, 2023, over the objections of the Trumps’ lawyers.
At that time, the defense attorneys filed several motions to dismiss, and Engoron rejected all of them. He said the rulings gave him “deja vu.”
The judge was no kinder in Friday’s decision, at one point dismissing the Trump attorneys’ arguments by writing, “Here, sophisticated defense counsel should have known better.”
But Engoron drew short of punishing the Trump lawyers. “In its discretion, this Court will not impose sanctions, which the Court believes are unnecessary, having made its point,” he wrote.
In her lawsuit. James cited numerous questionable valuations of Trump-owned real estate that was used as collateral for loans. Mar-a-Lago, which the Trump Organization valued at $739 million, was really worth closer to $75 million, the suit said.
Trump’s apartment in Trump Tower on Fifth Ave. was once given a $327 million price tag. James’ lawsuit called that “absurd given the fact that at that point only one apartment in New York City had ever sold for even $100 million” and instead estimated the true value at around $16.5 million.
Trump, 76, was so angered by the lawsuit that in December he countersued James. The ex-president is also the subject of numerous other criminal and civil investigations, from the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol to writer E. Jean Carroll’s civil suit alleging he raped her in the 1990s.
