(NEW YORK) — New York Attorney General Letitia James on Wednesday urged a federal judge in Florida to reject a lawsuit against her by a “disgruntled” Donald Trump.
Trump, in the suit, is seeking emergency protection for the revocable trust in which he parked his ownership of the Trump Organization. He accused James of seeking to invade his privacy by asking for documents about the trust as part of her $250 million civil lawsuit filed in September against the former president and his family.
The state attorney general’s office, in a new court filing Wednesday, said Trump deserves no relief from the court.
“There is no emergency requiring the Court to grant the extraordinary relief of a temporary injunction,” James’ filing said. “Instead, there is a just a disgruntled litigant, Donald J. Trump, who impermissibly seeks to evade the jurisdiction of a New York state court that is presiding over an enforcement action alleging pervasive fraud and illegality by him and others in the conduct of his New York-based business and has issued a number of rulings that he considers unfavorable.”
James has alleged Trump improperly adjusted the values of his real estate holdings to suit his business interests of the moment. His counterclaim in Florida, she said, is an attempted “end-run around the jurisdiction of the New York state court” where her lawsuit is filed.
Trump has denied all wrongdoing.
James defended her pursuit of information about the trust because, her filing said, it owns all of the assets that are valued in Trump’s financial disclosures. James has alleged those disclosures were fraudulent because they inflated Trump’s net worth and tricked banks into giving the former president more favorable loan terms than he deserved.
Fearing the alleged fraud was still going on, James last month convinced a judge to impose an independent monitor to oversee aspects of the Trump Organization’s business, including the preparation of Trump’s financial disclosures.
Trump argued the details of his trust should remain shielded from James because she would “widely publish” them, violating his right to privacy.
“Such a conclusory allegation is legally insufficient to support a motion for a preliminary injunction and belied by the documentary record,” James’ filing said. “Moreover, Mr. Trump fails to acknowledge that appropriate reasonable redactions are available to him in order to mitigate against any purported, albeit speculative, harm related to his estate planning information.”
The case, originally filed in Florida state court, was removed to federal court last month and assigned to a judge who has previously sanctioned Trump’s legal team for filing a frivolous lawsuit.
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