Trump Files a Suit Against N.Y.’s Attorney General, and Against Advice

 

Trump Files a Suit Against N.Y.’s Attorney General, and Against Advice

 

The case, filed in Florida, seeks to stop Letitia James’s lawsuit in New York and includes Mr. Trump’s signature rhetoric. His legal advisers are split on the wisdom of filing it.

 

The Florida suit includes boasts about the former president’s business and insults directed at his opponents.

 

By Jonah E. Bromwich, Maggie Haberman, Ben Protess and William K. Rashbaum

Nov. 3, 2022

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/03/nyregion/trump-lawsuit-ny-attorney-general.html

 

A tirade of a lawsuit that Donald J. Trump filed on Wednesday against one of his chief antagonists, the New York attorney general, was hotly opposed by several of his longstanding legal advisers, who attempted an intervention hours before it was submitted to a court.

 

Those opposed to the suit told the Florida attorneys who drafted it that it was frivolous and would fail, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The loudest objection came from the general counsel of Mr. Trump’s real estate business, who warned that the Floridians might be committing malpractice.

 

Nonetheless, the suit was filed. It accuses Attorney General Letitia James of trespassing on Mr. Trump’s right to privacy in Florida, where he lives, and seeks to halt her own civil case in New York against the former president and his company.

 

On Wednesday evening, Mr. Trump used his social network, Truth Social, to announce his suit and to criticize Ms. James in charged language, saying that “while James does nothing to protect New York against these violent crimes and criminals, she attacks great and upstanding businesses.”

 

In September, Ms. James filed her lawsuit against Mr. Trump after a three-year investigation into his business practices. Her suit accused Mr. Trump and his family business, the Trump Organization, of committing “staggering” fraud, overvaluing its assets by billions of dollars. It sought to bar Mr. Trump and three of his children from ever running a business in the state again and to essentially shut down some of his New York properties.

 

On Thursday, a judge granted a recent request from Ms. James to stop Mr. Trump from transferring assets and to appoint a monitor to make sure that he does not.

 

The former president has already tried unsuccessfully to stop Ms. James’s investigation, filing a complaint in federal court in New York that was dismissed in May. The new 41-page lawsuit against Ms. James was filed in Palm Beach by Timothy W. Weber, Jeremy D. Bailie and R. Quincy Bird, members of a St. Petersburg-based law firm — and was championed by Boris Epshteyn, an in-house counsel for the former president who has become one of his most trusted advisers.

 

An empire under scrutiny. Letitia James, New York State’s attorney general, has been conducting a yearslong civil investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s business practices, culminating in a lawsuit that accused Mr. Trump of “staggering” fraud. Here’s what to know:

 

The origins of the inquiry. The investigation started after Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer, testified to Congress in 2019 that Mr. Trump and his employees had manipulated his net worth to suit his interests.

 

The findings. Ms. James detailed in a filing what she said was a pattern by the Trump Organization to inflate the value of the company’s properties in documents filed with lenders, insurers and the Internal Revenue Service.

 

Mr. Trump’s lawsuit. In December 2021, Mr. Trump sued Ms. James, seeking to halt the inquiry on the grounds that the attorney general’s involvement in the investigation was politically motivated. In May, a federal judge dismissed the suit.

 

Invoking the Fifth Amendment. In August, Mr. Trump faced questions by the attorney general under oath. He declined to answer anything and invoked his right against self-incrimination, leaving Ms. James with a crucial decision: whether to sue the former president or seek a settlement.

 

Fraud lawsuit. In September, Ms. James’s office rebuffed a settlement offer from Mr. Trump’s lawyers. Days later, she filed a lawsuit against Mr. Trump and his family business, accusing them of a sweeping pattern of fraudulent business practices.

 

The possible penalties. Ms. James is seeking to bar Mr. Trump and three of his adult children — Eric, Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr. — from ever running a business in the state again. Her office has also referred the findings to federal prosecutors in Manhattan.

 

While lawsuits filed on behalf of Mr. Trump often bear signs of the former president’s input, the Florida suit at times sounds remarkably like him, replete with boasts and expressions of raw grievance.

 

“As a private company, nobody knew very much about the great business that then-businessman Donald Trump had built but now it is being revealed by James and much to her chagrin,” the lawsuit says. “The continuing witch hunt that has haunted and targeted Donald Trump since he came down the ‘golden escalator’ at Trump Tower in June of 2015 continues.”

 

But some legal experts questioned the merit of the suit.

 

“This, certainly on its face, appears to be objectively frivolous,” said Gerald Greenberg, a partner at Gelber, Schachter and Greenberg, a Florida law firm. “I’m aware of no authority that allows a state court in Florida to enjoin or otherwise interfere with a law enforcement investigation being conducted by New York state authorities.”

 

Unable to persuade the Florida lawyers to stand down Wednesday, the Trump Organization’s general counsel, Alan Garten, then took aim at Mr. Epshteyn, blaming him in an email to Mr. Epshteyn and other lawyers for the filing of the suit, said the people with knowledge of the discussion. Frustrations with Mr. Epshteyn among some of Mr. Trump’s other aides and representatives have been brewing for months and boiled over with the new legal action.

 

Another lawyer for Mr. Trump, Christopher M. Kise, a former Florida solicitor general, also objected to the filing of the lawsuit on Wednesday. And Mr. Trump’s legal team in New York expressed concern that the Florida lawsuit would undermine their defense in Ms. James’s case, costing them credibility with both the New York attorney general’s office and the judge overseeing the case, the people with knowledge of the matter said.

 

Indeed, on Thursday, Ms. James filed a letter with the New York judge, saying that Mr. Trump’s Florida lawsuit demonstrated that the former president was “attempting to shield the key documents governing the structure of his business conglomerate and ownership of his business assets from review.”

 

One person close to Mr. Trump who was briefed on the Florida suit insisted it was meritorious, because Ms. James had focused on Mr. Trump’s revocable trust, a legal entity that owns the Trump Organization, and Florida’s laws governing trusts and wills are relevant.

 

In a statement on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said that Ms. James is seeking to “go after my revocable trust and pry into my private estate plan, only to look for ways to recklessly injure me, my family, my businesses, and my tens of millions of supporters.”

 

A spokeswoman for Ms. James said in a statement that “multiple judges have dismissed Donald Trump’s baseless attempts to evade justice, and no number of lawsuits will deter us from pursuing this fraud.”

 

“We sued Donald Trump because he committed extensive financial fraud,” the statement said. “That fact hasn’t changed.”

 

Since Ms. James’s lawsuit was filed, Mr. Trump has been unsuccessful in several attempts to remove the judge presiding over the case, Arthur F. Engoron. The Florida lawsuit makes several references to Justice Engoron, saying that while he presided over the New York inquiry for months, “he made not a single ruling in favor of President Trump.”

 

Justice Engoron has ordered Mr. Trump to sit for a deposition and held him in contempt of court, fining him $110,000. And on Thursday, he blocked Mr. Trump from “selling, transferring or otherwise disposing of” the assets listed on the Trump Organization’s most recent annual financial statement, and said he would appoint an independent monitor to ensure that the order was followed.

 

The Florida lawsuit is an expression of frustration from the former president about such pressure on his company. Despite all the investigations that Mr. Trump is personally facing, the cases against his company have a particular emotional resonance.

 

He has been livid about Ms. James’s suit for weeks and has mocked her appearance to his advisers, according to people familiar with what he has said.

 

He is equally angry that his company is being tried by the Manhattan district attorney’s office for 17 felony charges. The trial began this week.

 

Mr. Epshteyn, meanwhile, has emerged as one of the former president’s favorite defenders but has long vexed a large number of other aides in Mr. Trump’s world.

 

A key figure involved in the efforts to invalidate Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the 2020 election, he helped coordinate efforts to use what one of the campaign’s own lawyers called fake electors to keep Congress from certifying Mr. Biden’s electoral college victory on Jan. 6. He had his phone seized by federal agents executing a search warrant in September.

 

Recently, Mr. Epshteyn has been serving as an in-house counsel on issues related to the investigation of the former president’s handling of hundreds of classified documents held at his members-only club. Mr. Trump has repeatedly extolled to other advisers what he sees as Mr. Epshteyn’s gifts and has rejected their criticisms of him.

 

But several of Mr. Trump’s advisers consider Mr. Epshteyn to be a malign presence with dubious legal skills, enabling the former president’s pugilistic — and sometimes self-destructive — impulses.

 

Even before the current dispute, according to advisers, Mr. Epshteyn had friction over strategy with Mr. Kise, the former Florida state solicitor general. Since then, Mr. Kise’s role has been minimized in the documents case and he has been asked to help with some of the New York cases, two people familiar with the situation said.

 

A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to a request for comment about the criticisms of Mr. Epshteyn over the suit. Mr. Weber, the lead among the St. Petersburg lawyers who filed the case, did not respond to a request for comment.

 

Jonah E. Bromwich covers criminal justice in New York, with a focus on the Manhattan district attorney's office, state criminal courts in Manhattan and New York City's jails. @jonesieman

 

Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent. She joined The Times in 2015 as a campaign correspondent and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on President Trump’s advisers and their connections to Russia. @maggieNYT

 

Ben Protess is an investigative reporter covering the federal government, law enforcement and various criminal investigations into former President Trump and his allies. @benprotess

 

William K. Rashbaum is a senior writer on the Metro desk, where he covers political and municipal corruption, courts, terrorism and law enforcement. He was a part of the team awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News. @WRashbaum • Facebook