Dive Brief:

• The New York Attorney General’s Office is prodding the Trump Organization to produce a 2016 email which pertains to the perjury plea of the organization’s ex-CFO, Allen Weisselberg, according to court documents.
• In a letter filed Thursday with the court, the NY AG’s office is asking for two modifications to the monitorship order issued by Judge Arthur Engoron on the Trump Organization relating to its civil fraud judgment. This includes a request for the monitor to “investigate certain issues surrounding the recent perjury plea by defendant Allen Weisselberg,” particularly a 2016 email surrounding the size of ex-president Donald Trump’s NYC triplex, according to the letter.
• “Among the evidence cited as proof that Mr. Weisselberg lied when he testified at trial, the Criminal Court Complaint identifies an August 18, 2016, email between Mr. Weisselberg and a Trump Organization employee with the Trump Tower Declaration confirming the size of the triplex apartment,” the letter reads. However, the NY AG’s office has not been able to identify the communications referenced in the criminal complaint, they said.

Dive Insight:

Weisselberg, a long-standing employee of the Trump Organization, pled guilty to felony perjury last month in a deal with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office that includes a five-month stint in jail set to begin April 10, CFO Dive previously reported.

The charges related to testimony given by Weisselberg during NY AG Letitia James’ civil fraud trial against former president Trump, which concerned allegations that the Trump Organization had artificially inflated the value of certain properties — including Trump’s triplex apartment — to gain more favorable bank loans.

In a February judgment following the months-long trial, Judge Engoron ordered Trump and the case’s defendants to pay millions in financial penalties, including a $2 million payment from Weisselberg and over $450 million plus accrued interest for Trump, the Trump Organization and his two eldest sons.

Weisselberg’s testimony surrounding the triplex, the penthouse apartment in Trump Tower, was central to the charges of perjury levied against the former CFO, who has already served time in prison following charges of tax fraud. After the ex-CFO’s testimony where he professed not to know about the artificially inflated size of the triplex — set at more than triple its actual size in key documents — Forbes published an article citing detailed emails and communications from the former CFO to the publication where Weisselberg repeatedly mentioned the triplex.

The NY AG’s office is asking U.S. District Court Judge Barbara Jones, the court-appointed monitor of the Trump Organization following the judgment, to locate an email to Weisselberg by an unnamed employee, which follows days after a message to the ex-CFO from Forbes asking after the size of the triplex, according to the letter filed Thursday. In that communication, the employee “emailed Weisselberg the Triplex First Amendment, which detailed its size at 10,996,” rather than the 30,000 claimed by the Trump Organization, the letter says. In another email, an unnamed subordinate of Weisselberg was asked to review that amendment and to verify its accuracy.

The NY AG, which was not able to find these communications, is asking that the monitor review the files collected to determine if the Trump Organization had the relevant documents, if they were produced during the investigation or civil trial and if they were not produced, why that was the case, according to the letter.  

“We have already raised multiple times the prospect that Defendants have withheld relevant and responsive information from OAG,” the letter reads. If the communications were not produced, the NY AG’s office requests that “the Monitor be authorized to determine  why they were not produced. We would further ask that the Monitor be authorized to conduct  this investigation and report back to the Court and OAG within two weeks.”

The NY AG’s office is also expressing concerns surrounding the bond provider, Knight Specialty Insurance Company, tapped for the $175 million bond Trump posted on Monday in New York. Because the bond provider is not an admitted carrier in the state and therefore lacks a certificate of qualification required by the state, the NY AG “hereby takes exception to the sufficiency of the surety to the undertaking given by Defendants,” they said in another filing to the court Thursday.

Both court filings by the NY AG come as Trump faces ongoing criminal charges in other cases while continuing to tussle with the courts regarding the outcome of his civil cases. The civil cases could have more of a notable effect on the ex-president than the criminal cases; for one thing, unlike the outcome of certain criminal charges, Trump would not be able to pardon himself or dismiss charges in civil litigation should be return to the White House, according to an op-ed by the New York Times.

The NY AG’s office and Seth Rosenberg, an attorney for Weisselberg with Clayman, Rosenberg, Kirshner & Linder LLP, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.