Trump, company and family members sued by New York AG over alleged fraud scheme

At a press conference in Manhattan Wednesday morning, James said that they would be filing a lawsuit against Donald Trump for violating the law. Donald Trump lied about his net worth to enrich himself and to cheat the system, according to the complaint.

James said the pattern of fraud used by the Trump organization was amazing.

James, a Democrat running for a second term in November, has been accused by Trump of being on a political vendetta and of threatening to take legal action against him if she wins. James told voters during her campaign that she would bring pressure on Trump similar to what Robert Muller did to him.

His legal team continued to make that point on Wednesday.

The filing is not focused on the facts or the law, but on furthering the Attorney General's agenda. The Attorney General's Office has overstepped its authority by snooping into transactions where no wrongdoing has been committed. Our judicial system will not tolerate this abuse of authority, and we look forward to defending our client against the Attorney General's meritless claims.

After Trump's former attorney, Michael Cohen, testified to Congress that Trump regularly inflated the value of his company's assets in order to secure favorable tax and loan arrangements, the state launched a three-and-a-half year investigation.

James is accusing Trump and his children of creating more than 200 misleading evaluations of the company's finances and other forms of misrepresentation. According to James, the apartment is worth more than any apartment ever sold in New York City.

James claimed that Trump had a limited partnership but no access to the funds, and that he counted the cash as his own. She accused Trump of inflating the value of anticipated income from golf club memberships.

According to the lawsuit, the valuation for 2011 assumed new members would pay an initiation fee of $200,000 for each of the 67 unsold memberships, even though many new members paid no initiation fee at all.

According to the lawsuit, Trump inflated his net worth as part of a scheme to purchase the Buffalo Bills to build a hotel in the Old Post Office Building in Washington, D.C.

James said that the examples he laid out were just the beginning of the problem. The pattern of fraud and deception used by Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization is amazing.

While the sweeping relief James is seeking would cripple many of Trump's businesses, James acknowledged at her press conference that Trump's lawyers recently proposed a settlement. She said that future proposals would be considered by her team.

The door is open according to the attorney general.

James' action is the latest in a pileup of legal threats to Trump and may not be the former president's most acute legal headaches as a series of other probes and trials close in on him.

The former president's attorneys were fighting in federal court to block the Justice Department's effort to investigate the discovery of highly sensitive national security records at his Mar-a-Lago estate. An Atlanta-area grand jury is nearing a critical phase in its own election-related probe, as well as former Trump aides and allies being hauled in by federal prosecutors.

The Manhattan District Attorney is preparing to try a criminal fraud case against the Trump Organization next month, and recently secured a guilty plea and agreement with the company's former CFO. James said her new suit is based on evidence that Trump ordered Weisselberg to inflate financial statements.

In the attorney general's case, Trump lost a number of court challenges on the issue. He invoked his Fifth Amendment right more than 400 times when he was questioned last month.

When your family, your company, and all the people in your circle have become the targets of a politically motivated witch hunt supported by lawyers, prosecutors, and the Fake News Media, you have no choice but to take the Fifth.