MANHATTAN (CN) — The state is looking to dig back into Trump Organization emails after testimony from Allen Weisselberg, the company’s former finance chief, raised suspicions from the attorney general’s office.
In a Thursday letter to Judge Arthur Engoron, the state requested the court-appointed monitor to “undertake a forensic examination” of Trump Organization emails between August and September 2016.
“By way of background, in response to OAG subpoenas, defendants produced some documents reflecting ongoing exchanges with Forbes Magazine about the valuation of assets during August and September 2016,” staff from the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James wrote. “While defendants have produced some emails in that exchange, it appears they have not produced a later set of emails … .”
The request comes on the heels of a bombshell Forbes article published last week, which suggested that the attorney general’s office didn’t get all of the emails it asked for from the Trump Organization. It also accused Weisselberg of perjuring himself on the stand when he testified that he “never focused” on the now-debunked square footage of Trump’s Manhattan penthouse.
The story claims that Weisselberg was actually instrumental in trying to deceive Forbes into believing the phony valuation so Trump’s net worth would appear higher.
“A review of old emails and notes, some of which the attorney general’s office does not possess, show that Weisselberg absolutely thought about Trump’s apartment — and played a key role in trying to convince Forbes over the course of several years that it was worth more than it really was,” Forbes’ Dan Alexander wrote.
The attorney general’s office is now looking to fill in the gaps, specifically seeking an email exchange between Weisselberg and real estate executive Steven Ekovich. It proposed an Oct. 27 deadline for the monitor to report the findings of the probe.
“Based on a review of the documents produced by defendants, OAG has identified likely omissions from production around inquiries from Forbes in 2016,” attorneys for the office wrote. “If the monitor determines that responsive information was not produced, she can provide an assessment of where in the process the failure occurred and propose remedies to ameliorate those issues.”
Alexander claimed in a new follow-up story on Thursday that Forbes plans to share proof of Weisselberg’s perjury in the coming days.
“Forbes does not know whether the Trump Organization produced all of its documents,” Alexander wrote. The evidence that Forbes has that Weisselberg lied, which the attorney general’s office certainly does not have, is a collection of notes taken by Forbes reporters who were in touch with the Trump Organization over the years while estimating the size of Trump’s fortune.”
Should the court approve the state’s request for an examination, it won’t have to appoint a monitor to conduct it. It already has one: former federal judge Barbara Jones, who was appointed to be the court’s independent monitor earlier this month when Engoron barred defendants from moving around assets without telling the court.
After Forbes published its story last week, Weisselberg’s testimony was abruptly stopped, to pick up at a later, undisclosed date. His son, Jack Weisselberg, continued his testimony on Thursday.
Fielding questions from Colleen Faherty of the Attorney General’s Office, Jack Weisselberg, an executive at Ladder Capital, said he relied somewhat on Trump’s scrutinized statements of financial condition when administering a $160 million loan to the Trump Organization.
He claimed that Trump’s net worth, which the state says was artificially inflated on those statements, was one factor that he considered when giving the loan.
“The net worth was one of many statements we were looking at,” Jack Weisselberg said. “It was a factor.”
The day before, Jack Weisselberg testified that his father was generally his direct line of communication within the Trump Organization, which the state corroborated by showing several emails between the two discussing loan terms.
Jack Weisselberg was excused from the witness stand on Thursday, but the defense lawyers reserved their right to call him back later in the trial.
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