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      ‘Trump show is over,’ says New York attorney general as third day of fraud trial ends

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      The New York attorney general, Letitia James, told reporters on Wednesday that “the Trump show is over” as the third day of the former US president’s civil fraud trial wrapped up in Manhattan.James and Trump both returned to the trial a day after Trump ran afoul of the judge by denigrating a key court staffer in a social media post.Outside court, James called Trump’s appearance at the civil trial – which he is not required to attend – a “political stunt” and a “fundraising stop”.Trump has spent the first three days of the trial attacking James and Judge Arthur Engoron in press gatherings outside court. He is expected to return to Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday.“I will not be bullied,” James said. “Justice will be served.”The former US president and Republican frontrunner in the 2024 presidential race is voluntarily taking time out from the campaign trail to attend the trial. James’s lawsuit accuses Trump and his business of deceiving banks, insurers and others by providing financial statements that greatly exaggerated his wealth.Trump formally appealed a judge’s refusal to dismiss James’s civil fraud lawsuit against him and his family business on Wednesday. The appeal was filed as Trump sat in a the courtroom, watching an accountant who used to work for him testify as the state’s first witness.Engoron already has ruled that Trump committed fraud by inflating the values of prized assets including his Trump Tower penthouse. The ruling could, if upheld on appeal, cost Trump control of his signature skyscraper and some other properties.Trump denies any wrongdoing. With familiar rhetoric, on his way into court on Wednesday, he called James “incompetent”, portrayed her as part of a broader Democratic effort to weaken his 2024 prospects and termed the trial “a disgrace”.Trump has frequently vented in the courthouse hallway and on social media about the trial, James and Judge Engoron, also a Democrat.But after he assailed Engoron’s principal law clerk on social media on Tuesday, the judge imposed a limited gag order, commanding all participants in the trial not to hurl personal attacks at court staffers. The judge told Trump to delete the “disparaging, untrue and personally identifying post”, and the former president took it down.The non-jury trial concerns six claims that remained in the lawsuit after Engoron’s pretrial ruling, and the trial is to determine how much Trump might owe in penalties. James is seeking $250m and a ban on Trump doing business in New York.On Wednesday, an accountant who prepared Trump’s financial statements for years was to continue testifying as a witness for the state. James’s lawyers are trying to show that Trump and others at his company had full control over the preparation of the statements.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe accountant, Donald Bender, told the court on Tuesday that the Trump Organization didn’t always supply all the documents needed to produce the statements, despite attesting in letters to the accounting firm that the company had provided all financial records and hadn’t “knowingly withheld” relevant data.During cross-examination, Bender acknowledged he missed a change in information about the size of the Trump Tower apartment.The defense lawyer Jesus Suarez seized on that, telling Bender that Trump’s company and employees were “going through hell” because “you missed it”.Bender responded: “We didn’t screw it up. The Trump Organization made a mistake, and we didn’t catch it.”Trump plans to testify later in the trial.Agencies contributed to this article More

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      ‘No one is above the law’: attorney general on Donald Trump’s civil fraud case – video

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      Trump arrived at a New York court just a few miles south of Trump Tower on Monday for the first day of a fraud trial that could end up with the former US president and his family business paying hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, and has already threatened to end his business career in the city where it started. The New York attorney general, Letitia James, has accused Trump of using false and misleading financial statements from 2011 to 2021 to make himself and his businesses wealthier, helping him broker deals and obtain financing. Based on her office’s three-year investigation, James is arguing that Trump owes at least $250m for committing fraud More

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      New York City public hospitals to offer abortion care via telehealth

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      New York City public hospitals will now offer abortion care via telehealth, placing them among the first public health systems in the US to do so.The city’s mayor, Eric Adams, announced on Monday that abortion pill prescriptions would now be available by telephone or online, adding that such access can happen from “the comfort of your home”.As a result of the move, New York City residents will now be able to connect with health practitioners for those prescriptions, building on previous legislations to protect abortions rights in New York.“If you are clinically eligible, that provider will be able to prescribe abortion medication that would be delivered to your New York City address within days,” Adams said during Monday’s announcement.“We will not stand idly by as these attacks continue and the far-rights seeks to strip our citizens of their basic rights,” Adams added, referring to abortion restrictions being legislated across the country.Abortion rights organizations celebrated Monday’s announcement as an essential step to protect reproductive rights.“Today marks a historic win for abortion access in New York City,” said Wendy Stark, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater New York.“When we make abortion care more accessible, we empower individuals to make the best decisions for themselves, their families and their futures,” Stark added.The expanded access to abortion care comes after the supreme court’s elimination last year of the federal abortion rights established by Roe v Wade.Since then, at least 20 states have passed restrictions on abortions, the New York Times reports.Fourteen states, mainly in the south, have enacted total bans on the medical procedure.US courts have also limited access to abortion medication. In August, a US appeals court ruled that the abortion pill mifepristone should be regulated according to rules set prior to 2016.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn August 2022, Adams signed legislation protecting the right to abortions in New York City after the supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade.The measures signed by Adams – six in total – also made abortion medication free at all of New York’s department of health and mental hygiene clinics.The New York state legislature has also passed legislation protecting medical professionals in the state who provide abortion pills to patients in places where the procedure is banned, the New York Times reported.Other Democratic-led cities and states have passed similar measures protecting reproductive rights.In January, the governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker, signed legislation expanding abortion access by allowing more practitioners to provide the medical procedure and mandating that agencies in the state cover the procedure, the television news outlet WTTW reported. More

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      Letitia James: the fearless attorney general threatening Trump’s business

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      New York attorney general Letitia James has never shied away from taking on powerful adversaries – from the National Rifle Association to former New York governor Andrew Cuomo.On Monday she will take on her biggest case yet: a fraud trial that threatens the very foundation of Donald Trump’s New York real estate empire.Critics have accused the 64-year-old career prosecutor of using her office, with 1,700 staff and over 700 assistant attorneys general, for political purposes. To others, the Democrat is a heroic figure: the first woman elected as New York’s attorney general and the first Black person to serve in the role. A fearless prosecutor who has taken on cases others would walk away from.Like Trump, “Tish” James was born and raised in New York City. It’s about the only thing they have in common. Raised with her seven siblings in Brooklyn, James attended public schools in the city before getting her law degree at Howard University in Washington DC.She started her law career as a public defender before entering New York politics as a councilmember and then as public advocate, the first Black woman to hold the watchdog role. James’s passions were clear from the start – she filed a record number of suits on behalf of tenants, seniors and people with disabilities. James became New York state attorney general in 2018.Few think her ambitions stop there. Top state prosecutor has often been the jumping off point for a run for New York’s governorship, which James briefly attempted last year.The Trump trial will thrust James further into the spotlight and she is off to an impressive start. James has already claimed one victory in the case. Last week, the New York judge Arthur Engoron ruled the real estate developer had committed fraud for years as he built his empire by inflating the value of his holdings. In an early win for James, Engoron revoked the business licenses of Trump and his adult sons, Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump, essentially barring them from doing business in the state.This week, Engoron will hear arguments on a potential fine, which could be at least $250m.“I come from a long line of very strong, tough women. We stick to our principles and stand up for what we believe in, which is fundamental fairness, which is my raison d’être,” James told Elle Magazine in 2017.As attorney general, she has worked for more funding for pre-trial services, the reform of bail laws for minor offenses, treatments for the mental health crisis, cracking down on ghost guns and defending the state’s gun laws restricting the public carrying of firearms.James has also said she wants to prioritize antitrust investigations and consumer protections, and focus on reducing tenant evictions amid skyrocketing rents in the city and state.Last year, James suspended her campaign for New York governor, saying she wanted to “finish the job” with her ongoing investigations, including overseeing a sexual harassment investigation into former governor Cuomo that led to his resignation, an inquiry into the NRA and fraudulent financial practices of the former president.In interviews during her campaign, James said that not pursuing evidence of wrongdoing by Trump or the NRA would have been a “dereliction of my duty” and rejected claims that her legal pursuits were not on behalf of New Yorkers but her “own personal ambitions”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I make no apologies, because this is who I am, and this is what I do,” James added.On the same day that she ended her campaign, reports said she was looking to sit Trump for a deposition as part of her civil investigation into his business practices. Trump has called James “a renegade and out of control prosecutor”, dismissed the case as “crazy” and a “witch-hunt”, and invoked his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination 400 times.Trump maintains his innocence and his lawyers are appealing the pre-trial ruling. But outside observers believe this case will be a real test of Trump’s – often successful – bluster.Andrew Lieb, a real estate attorney and legal political analyst, says James is doing no more or less than what attorneys general do. The fact that Trump received a pre-trial ruling in his fraud trial shows just how clear the case against him was.“He was so outrageous, pompous and immune to order and business practices that someone had to do something about it. It was like spitting and saying it’s raining,” Lieb said. “It’s not like he took a $10m property and said it was worth $11m. He took a $10m property and said it was worth over $100m.”James, he says, will go down as an effective attorney general. “She’s effective in that she won. No one remembers how you played the game, they just remember that you won.” More

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      Republicans attacking Bowman but backing Santos should ‘check values’, AOC says

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      Republicans calling for action against the New York Democrat Jamaal Bowman for triggering a fire alarm in a congressional office building as a vote loomed on a deal to avoid a government shutdown should “check their own values”, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said, citing the lack of action against a GOP New Yorker, George Santos, after he was indicted for fraud.“They are protecting someone who has lied to the American people, lied to the United States House of Representatives, lied to congressional investigators,” Ocasio-Cortez, widely known as AOC, told CNN’s State of the Union.“But they’re filing a motion to expel a member who, in a moment of panic, was trying to escape a vestibule? Give me a break.”Santos won his seat last year but saw his resumé taken apart and his background extensively questioned before being indicted on charges of money laundering and fraud. In May, he pled not guilty. Republicans sidestepped an effort to expel him from Congress, saying legal processes should run their course.Like Ocasio-Cortez, Bowman is a prominent New York progressive. In a statement on Saturday, he denied trying to delay the process that stopped a government shutdown.He said: “As I was rushing to make a vote, I came to a door that is usually open for votes but today was not open. I am embarrassed to admit that I activated the fire alarm, mistakenly thinking it would open the door. I regret this and sincerely apologise for any confusion this caused.“I want to be very clear, this was not me, in any way, trying to delay any vote. It was the exact opposite – I was trying to urgently get a vote, which I ultimately did.”Kevin McCarthy, the speaker under pressure from his own party over the deal with Democrats, likened Bowman’s behaviour to that of Donald Trump supporters who broke into the Capitol on 6 January 2021, trying to overturn an election in a riot now linked to nine deaths.Nicole Malliotakis, a New York Republican, said she was drafting a resolution to expel.Authorities were investigating. In Washington, falsely activating a fire alarm is a misdemeanour.Ocasio-Cortez told CNN: “I think there’s something to be said about, the government’s about to shut down, there’s a vote clock that’s going down, the exits that are normally open in that building were suddenly closed … Jamaal Bowman … he’s fully participating in saying there was a misunderstanding.“But what I do think is important to raise is the fact that Republicans like Nicole Malliotakis and others immediately moved to file motions to censure, motions to expel before there has even been conversations … to even see if there was a misunderstanding here.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“… What they did not do was to commit to the same when George Santos was actually found guilty after a thorough investigation of 13 federal charges.”Santos has reportedly negotiated with federal prosecutors, suggesting a plea deal might be on the cards. He has not been found guilty.Ocasio-Cortez continued: “He’s indicted on everything from wire fraud to actual lying to House investigators. And [Republicans] have been buddying up and giggling with him on the House floor.”Bowman, she said, “admits he’s embarrassed … he apologised. And they are protecting someone who has not only committed wire fraud, not only defrauded veterans, not only lied to congressional investigators, but is openly gloating about it.“[It] is absolutely humiliating to the Republican caucus. And I think that they should really check their own values.” More

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      Court rejects Trump effort to delay New York civil trial days after fraud ruling

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      An appeals court on Thursday rejected Donald Trump’s attempt to delay a civil trial in a lawsuit brought by New York’s attorney general, allowing the case to proceed days after a judge ruled the former president committed years of fraud and stripped him of some companies as punishment.The decision, by the state’s intermediate appellate court, clears the way for Judge Arthur Engoron to preside over a non-jury trial starting 2 October in Manhattan in the civil lawsuit brought by the New York attorney general, Letitia James.Trump is listed among dozens of possible witnesses, setting up a potential courtroom showdown with the judge. The fraud ruling on Tuesday threatens to upend his real estate empire and force him to give up prized New York properties such as Trump Tower, a Wall Street office building, golf courses and a suburban estate.Trump has denied wrongdoing, arguing that some of his assets are worth far more than what is listed on annual financial statements that Engoron said he used to secure loans and make deals. Trump has argued that the statements have disclaimers that absolve him of liability. His lawyers have said they would appeal.Messages seeking comment were left on Thursday with Trump’s lawyers and James’s office.In New York “these cases take many years to get to trial”, Trump wrote on Wednesday in a post on his Truth Social platform that appeared to conflate several of his legal foes. “My Political Witch Hunt case is actually scheduled to start on Monday. Nobody can believe it? This is a ‘Railroading’ job, pushed hard by the Radical Left DOJ for purposing Election Interference. A very SAD time for New York State, and America!”Trump’s lawyers had sought the trial delay before Engoron’s ruling, alleging the judge abused his authority and hindered their preparations by failing to comply with a June appeals court order that he narrow the scope of the trial based on the statute of limitations.They filed a lawsuit against Engoron on 14 September under a provision of state law known as Article 78, which allows people to challenge some judicial authority, and asked that the trial be postponed until that matter was resolved.An appeals court judge, David Friedman, granted an interim stay of the trial while the full appeals court considered the lawsuit on an expedited basis. Thursday’s ruling lifted the stay, allowing the trial to proceed as scheduled.Engoron ruled on Tuesday that Trump and his company, the Trump Organization, defrauded banks, insurers and others with annual financial statements that massively overvalued his assets and exaggerated his wealth. Engoron ordered some of Trump’s companies removed from his control and dissolved. James alleges Trump boosted his net worth by as much as $3.6bn.After the ruling, Trump’s lawyers again urged the appeals court to delay the trial.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThey argued in court papers that Engoron showed in his 35-page decision that he was intent on defying the appeals court by ignoring the statute of limitations issue. Engoron refused to dismiss any claims and based his fraud ruling partly on stale allegations that should have been thrown out, the Trump lawyer Clifford Robert said.Engoron’s fraud ruling, in a phase of the case known as summary judgment, resolved the key claim in James’s lawsuit, but six others remain. They include allegations of conspiracy, falsifying business records and insurance fraud. The judge will also decide on James’s request for $250m in penalties.James’s office argued Trump’s lawsuit against Engoron was a “brazen and meritless attempt” to usurp his authority and that any delay “would likely wreak havoc on the trial schedule” and could cause conflicts with Trump’s four pending criminal cases.The civil trial is the culmination of a years-long investigation by James’s office that saw Trump questioned under oath and millions of pages of documents change hands. Engoron has said it could take three months. More

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      Trump’s business empire could collapse ‘like falling dominoes’ after ruling

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      Donald Trump’s real estate empire could collapse “like falling dominoes”, experts believe, following a New York judge’s ruling that the former president’s business fortune was built on rampant fraud and blatant lies.According to Michael Cohen, his former attorney and fixer, Trump is already effectively “out of business” in New York after Judge Arthur Engoron on Tuesday rescinded the licenses of the Trump Organization and other companies owned by Trump and his adult sons, Eric and Don Jr.“Those companies will end up being liquidated … the judge has already determined that the fraud existed,” Cohen told CNN, hailing Engoron’s pretrial ruling in a civil case brought by Letitia James, the New York attorney general.On Wednesday morning, in a confrontational post on his Truth Social website that branded the judge a “political hack”, Trump said Engoron “must be stopped”.At a hearing on Wednesday afternoon, Trump’s legal team asked Engoron if his ruling meant Trump’s assets and businesses must be sold, or if they could continue to operate under receivership.Engoron said he would address the issue at the non-jury trial beginning on 2 October, and extended to 30 days his original 10-day deadline for both parties to suggest names to act as receivers for the various companies.The lawyers have said they will appeal the rescinding of the licenses, the appointment of receivers, and Engoron’s assertion that Trump and executives lived in a “fantasy world” of routinely, repeatedly and illegally overvaluing property values and his personal net worth to gain favorable loan terms and reduced insurance premiums.But if the appeals are unsuccessful, the collapse of the Trump empire, upon which the former reality TV host staked his reputation as a successful business tycoon, could be imminent.It would probably start with the sale of Trump’s most prestigious real estate assets, experts say, including Trump Tower in New York, golf courses and resorts around the US, and possibly his prized Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, if it is determined to be a business operation instead of his primary residential home.In his post on Wednesday, Trump decried the judge’s $18m valuation of Mar-a-Lago, claiming it was worth “100 times more than he values it”.William Black, a white-collar criminologist, corporate fraud investigator and distinguished scholar in residence for financial regulation at the University of Minnesota law school, said: “In finance, once the dominoes start falling, it becomes basically impossible to save it.“These properties are even more damaged goods today because of the success in demonstrating they are massively overvalued. The most likely thing, if you get an honest agent or receiver, they’re going to sell the properties at a loss. And when you’ve got a whole bunch of properties, with the first one you just desperately need to get some action and that gets discounted the most.”Black, who helped expose congressional wrongdoing in the Lincoln Savings and Loans scandal of the 1980s, in which the financier Charles Keating inflated his company’s worth to bilk taxpayers for billions, called Engoron’s ruling “devastating”. He believes Trump insiders and employees would have incentive to come forward with more information if he loses his wealth and influence.“What we experienced in the Savings and Loan debacle, we would put in an honest manager and employees would start coming to that person over time and say, ‘You know, you really ought to look at this,’” Black said.“Trump is monumentally, stupidly greedy in that he isn’t actually paying for a number of key lieutenants in terms of their legal needs, and they’re facing financial collapse of their own, [such as] the Rudy Giulianis of this world. But a lot of folks can sink Trump.“Having this ability to control all these assets, even if they’re massively overvalued, meant hope springs eternal among the Trump folks that he can use that money and influence to help them, but if Trump instead ends up bereft of control over the overwhelming bulk of his assets, and has lots of liabilities, sugar daddy goes away.”Engoron’s independent court-appointed monitor for the Trump Organization, the retired federal judge Barbara Jones, reported last month she had identified inconsistency and incompleteness in financial disclosures.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOthers also see the writing on the wall.“Donald Trump is no longer in business,” David Cay Johnston, author of the Trump-themed book The Big Cheat, wrote in DC Report.“Barring a highly unlikely reversal by an appeals court, Trump’s business assets eventually will be liquidated since he cannot operate them without a business license. The various properties are likely to be sold at fire sale prices and certainly not for top dollar when liquidation begins, probably after all appeals are exhausted.“I give Trump’s chances of prevailing on appeal at somewhere between zero and nothing except perhaps on some minor procedural point, which you can be sure Trump will describe as complete vindication.”Joyce Vance, a retired US attorney and University of Alabama law school professor, called Engoron’s ruling “justice”.“This is New York’s corporate death penalty, applied to Trump because of years of misconduct,” she wrote on X, formerly Twitter.Black said Trump’s downfall would be self-inflicted.“The key to these frauds is not genius, it’s audacity, but Trump never wanted to do it himself, he’s too lazy, right?” he said.“And now he doesn’t control the people who have to actually do the deals. So they’re now forced into thousands of discussions, first with this judge, now this receiver, and that can’t work.“You won’t be able to do the scams, and you won’t be able to do things quickly, either. That means a domino effect in credit failings and bankruptcies. As people start taking action against your properties, the liquidity you’re boasting isn’t going to be there and you’re going to get a bankruptcy.” More

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      Donald Trump committed fraud as he built his real estate empire, New York judge rules

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      Donald Trump committed fraud for years while building the real estate empire that catapulted him to fame and the White House, a New York judge ruled Tuesday in a strongly-worded rejection of the former president’s bid to throw out a civil lawsuit against him.Judge Arthur Engoron found that Trump and executives from his company, including his sons Eric and Donald Jr, routinely and repeatedly deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork.His ruling came in a civil lawsuit brought by Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, days before the start of a non-jury trial that will hear accusations that Trump, and the Trump Organization, lied for a decade about asset values and his net worth to get better terms on bank loans and insurance.“The documents here clearly contain fraudulent valuations that defendants used in business,” Engoron wrote.James has said Trump had effectively engaged in a “bait and switch” operation, inflating his net worth by as much as $2.23bn, and by one measure as much as $3.6bn, on annual financial statements given to banks and insurers.Assets whose values were inflated include Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, his penthouse apartment in Manhattan’s Trump Tower, and various office buildings and golf courses, James said in the lawsuit filed in September 2022.Trump’s legal team had previously asked Engoron to dismiss the case against him, arguing James lacked authority to file the lawsuit because there was no evidence the public was harmed by Trump’s actions, and that many of the allegations were beyond the statute of limitations.But the judge indicated last week he was not inclined to be sympathetic, rebuking Trump’s lawyers for making “frivolous arguments” and stating he was considering sanctions against them.Chris Kise, who is also representing Trump in a federal indictment in Florida over the former president’s handling of classified documents after leaving the White House, argued: “What is happening here is what happens every day in complex business transactions”.Engoron was not swayed.“The fact that no one was hurt does not mean the case gets dismissed,” he said. In his ruling Tuesday, he granted a motion by James seeking sanctions against Trump’s legal team for repeatedly making arguments already rejected, fining five attorneys $7,500 each.Manhattan prosecutors had looked into bringing a criminal case over the fraudulent conduct but declined to do so, leaving James to sue Trump and seek penalties that could disrupt his and his family’s ability to do business in New York.Engoron’s ruling, in a phase of the case known as summary judgment, resolves the key claim in James’s lawsuit, although six others remain.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe non-jury trial is scheduled to start on 2 October. James is seeking $250m in penalties and a ban on Trump doing business in New York, his home state. The hearing could last into December, Engoron has said.The judge has penalized Trump before. In early 2022, the former president paid $110,000 in fines after failing to meet case deadlines.The case is one of several that Trump, the runaway leader in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, must navigate while appearing on the campaign trail. He faces 91 criminal charges under four indictments, for hush-money payments to an adult movie star, illegal retention of classified information, and election subversion at the federal and state levels.In civil court, he also faces a second defamation trial involving the writer E Jean Carroll, who said he sexually assaulted her in the 1990s. Found liable for defamation and sexual abuse, Trump has already been fined about $5m and adjudicated as a rapist.
      Martin Pengelly contributed reporting More