As devoted Trump trial watchers know, Judge Arthur Engoron said he hoped to release his ruling by today — Jan. 31 — in the New York attorney general’s civil fraud trial against former President Donald Trump; his adult sons, Eric and Don Jr.; multiple Trump-owned companies; and others.
And as we wait, I decided last night to take a closer look at the letter sent to Engoron by former federal Judge Barbara Jones last Friday, when I was consumed with the verdict in another Trump civil trial — E. Jean Carroll’s second defamation case.
You might remember that Jones was initially appointed as an independent monitor of the Trump Organization in late 2022, when the New York AG’s office obtained a preliminary injunction in the case based on its initial showing of long-standing fraud throughout the organization’s financial statements. Jones — whose appointment was agreed to by both sides — has served in that capacity since, and she submits semi-regular reports to Engoron.
In her most recent report, as many have noted, she not only identified a variety of irregularities but also flagged something potentially more significant: the absence of any loan agreement memorializing what she understood to be a $48 million loan to Trump from Chicago Unit Acquisition, an entity affiliated with his Chicago building. That loan, which reportedly was made in 2012, seems to have been repeatedly included among Trump’s liabilities in his U.S. Office of Government Ethics-required financial disclosures in 2018, 2019, 2020 and just days before leaving office in 2021. Yet in her letter, Jones noted that in her recent discussions with the Trump Organization, the company “indicated that it has determined that this loan never existed.”
What’s more, Jones’ letter implies that Trump’s present-day disclosures to the Office of Government Ethics are similarly flawed. Indeed, a review of Trump’s 2023 personal financial disclosure report, which he filed as a presidential…
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