NEWSNew York Attorney General Adds 'Criminal Capacity' To Trump Organization Investigation
The New York Attorney General's office says it is now investigating the Trump Organization "in a criminal capacity."
The investigation has been underway since 2019 and will also continue as a civil probe.
"We have informed the Trump Organization that our investigation into the organization is no longer purely civil in nature. We are now actively investigating the Trump Organization in a criminal capacity, along with the Manhattan DA," New York Attorney General Letitia James' spokesman Fabien Levy told CNN.
According to BBC, there was no mention of if former President Donald Trump will personally be implicated in any allegations or an indication of what turned the civil inquiry into a criminal one.
The attorney general office is working with the Manhattan district attorneys office in an investigation into the Trump Organization into whether or not the company had misled insurance companies and lenders about the value of properties and if it paid proper taxes.
According to BBC, James launched a civil inquiry amid claims that Trump boosted the value of his assets when seeking loans from banks and understated them to lower his taxes. This came after Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen testified to Congress in 2019 that Trump had inflated the value of assets to get better loans from banks and then undervalued them to reduce his tax bills.
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James had also reportedly been seeking documents on four Trump Organization properties in Manhattan, upstate New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.
According to CNN, several Trump Organization properties' financial dealings are being looked at which include a building in Lower Manhattan; Trump International Hotel and Tower Chicago, Seven Springs Estate in Westchester County, New York; 40 Wall Street, and Trump National Golf Club in Los Angeles.
In court documents from August, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. reportedly said that his office was investigating alleged "protracted criminal conduct" at the organization, which cited articles about alleged bank and insurance fraud taking place. In February, Vance Jr's office announced that they had obtained Trump's tax returns as part of the investigation.
Trump reportedly previously called the investigation from the attorney general politically motivated.
As previously reported by OK!, a private school in Manhattan was subpoenaed by New York prosecutors in connection to a probe into Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg. Prosecutors are reportedly trying to get Weisselberg to cooperate in the investigation.
