Trump overstated net worth by up to $3.6 billion per year, NY AG alleges in new filing

Former President Donald Trump‘s net worth was inflated by billions of dollars more than what the New York attorney general’s office recently believed to be the case, the AG said in a new court filing Friday.

Citing an analysis by valuation and accounting experts and taking into account other adjustments, the AG alleged that Trump’s net worth in any given year between 2011 and 2021 was overstated by $1.9 billion to $3.6 billion.

That is “still a conservative estimate,” New York Attorney General Letitia James alleged in the filing, because those valuation experts still accepted many of the assumptions used by the defendants in their annual financial statements.

James made the new claims in a filing opposing Trump’s request for a summary judgment in his favor in the AG’s sweeping civil fraud lawsuit against the former president, his adult sons and his businesses.

James is suing Trump and his co-defendants for allegedly defrauding banks, insurance companies and others to obtain better tax and loan terms for the Trump Organization. The prosecutor is seeking $250 million in damages.

Attorneys for Trump did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

Last week, James asked the court for partial summary judgment in the case, asserting that a “mountain of undisputed evidence” backed up her allegations.

In that filing, James wrote that “numerous deceptive schemes” used to inflate Trump’s total assets had a “staggering” cumulative effect of overstating his net worth by 17%-39% per year. That “translates to the enormous sum of $1 billion or more in all but one year,” or between $812 million and $2.2 billion, the AG wrote.

But “the extent of Defendants’ deception is far greater” than what was laid out in that filing, which relied solely on the undisputed evidence in the case, James wrote in Friday’s memorandum in New York Supreme Court.

By including a number of factors that would normally be considered by market participants when “determining estimated current value,” the AG alleged that Trump’s net worth is “overstated by billions more.”

Among the additional factors taken into account were “discounting future income to present value,” and “correcting for inconsistent methodologies,” James wrote.

Based on the expert analyses, Trump’s net worth reported in his statements of financial condition was inflated by $3 billion or more for seven years straight, starting in 2013, the court filing alleged.

The case is set to head to trial on Oct. 2, becoming Trump’s first trial since he left the White House in 2021.

On Wednesday, Judge Arthur Engoron rejected Trump’s bid to delay the trial, calling the request “completely without merit.”

James earlier this week asked Engoron to sanction Trump and others in the case for repeatedly putting forward the same failed legal arguments.