New York v. Trump is a civil investigation and lawsuit by the office of the New York Attorney General alleging that individuals and business entities within the Trump Organization engaged in financial fraud by presenting vastly disparate property values to potential lenders and tax officials, in violation of New York Executive Law § 63(12). The defendants were Donald Trump, five other individuals including three of his children, and ten business entities including some that owned property in New York, Florida, and Chicago. After a trial that took place from October 2023 to January 2024, presiding judge Arthur Engoron ordered the defendants to disgorge a total of US$364 million of ill-gotten gains, among other penalties, but an appeals court in August 2025 voided this penalty.
Attorney General Letitia James began investigating the organization in early 2019, with public litigation beginning in August 2020 to support her subpoenas in the inquiry. In February 2022, Engoron ruled in favor of James's subpoenas, and in April 2022, Donald Trump was found in contempt of court for not complying with them and Trump was fined $110,000.
In September 2022, the Attorney General sued Trump, his three oldest children (Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric), former chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, former controller Jeffrey McConney, and ten related companies. In November 2022, Engoron appointed retired judge Barbara S. Jones to monitor the organization regarding potential future fraud. In 2023, Ivanka was released as a defendant due to an expired statute of limitations.
In September 2023, Engoron issued a summary judgment that Trump and his company had committed fraud for years. The judge ordered the termination of the defendants' state business licenses and the dissolution of pertinent limited liability companies (pending appeal). The trial covered six additional claims by the Attorney General and considered further penalties. In October, a gag order was placed on Trump, forbidding him from publicly disparaging court staff; the judge fined Trump $5,000 and $10,000 for two violations of the order that same month. The defense unsuccessfully sought to dismiss the case, as well as related subpoenas and rulings.
In February 2024, Engoron concluded that the "defendants failed to accept responsibility or to impose internal controls to prevent future recurrences" of having "submitted blatantly false financial data" to "borrow more and at lower rates". Engoron assessed Trump and his companies $354 million of disgorgement of ill-gotten gains (not including interest), while Eric and Donald Jr. were assessed $4 million each, and Weisselberg $1 million. These four and McConney were also banned from leading New York organizations from two to three years; Weisselberg and McConney were also permanently banned from having any financial control in such organizations.
In March 2024, the New York Appellate Division, First Department, lowered the defendants' required bond from $464 million to $175 million, while staying the bans ordered by Engoron. In early April, Trump posted the bond. An appeal hearing was held on September 26. On August 21, 2025, the appeals court upheld Trump's liability but voided the penalty as excessive.
Background
In Donald Trump's defamation case against TrumpNation author Timothy L. O'Brien, Trump testified in 2007 that "I think everybody" exaggerates their property values and that he did not do so "beyond reason". He said he would give his opinion to Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, who "predominately" determined final values, which Trump called "conservative". Regarding one case in which a property increased from $80 million in 2005 to $150 million in 2006, Trump stated, "The property was valued very low, in my opinion, then and it became very—it just has gone up." He was unable to provide a reason for this other than his opinion. Between 2011 and 2015, the Trump Organization presented several properties as being worth millions of dollars—in one case over $500 million—more to potential lenders than to tax officials; this was reported by The Washington Post in November 2021.
In January 2017, ahead of Trump's inauguration, his attorney Sheri Dillon announced that the organization's businesses would be transferred to a trust controlled by Trump's sons Donald Jr. and Eric Trump, as well as Weisselberg.
In February 2019, prompted by U.S. House Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asking whether Trump had ever presented inflated assets to an insurance company, former Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen testified to Congress that Trump "inflated [the organization's] total assets when it served his purposes, such as trying to be listed amongst the wealthiest people in Forbes, and deflated his assets to reduce his real estate taxes." Following Cohen's testimony, in March, the New York State Department of Financial Services issued a subpoena to Aon, the organization's longtime insurance broker.
Initial investigation and proceedings In March 2019, the office of New York Attorney General (OAG) Letitia James began investigating the organization, the AG having stated during her 2018 campaign that she intended to do so, though she was referring to crimes pertaining to claims he committed fraud to raise rents on tenants as noted in a 2018 NY Times investigation. By December 2019, James's office had subpoenaed the organization for some records which it subsequently failed to provide for at least 21 months.
Initial subpoenas and discovery On July 17, 2020, Allen Weisselberg was deposed. He made false statements, denying he had ever been present when Donald Trump described the triplex's size and claiming "we didn't find out about the error [on the 2016 financial statement] until the [May 2017] Forbes article came out". (Nearly four years later, he pleaded guilty to perjury for these two statements.)
In August 2020, James disclosed in a court filing that her office had been conducting a civil investigation of the Trump Organization for asset inflation for 18 months. She asked the court to compel the organization to provide information it had been withholding, including testimony from Eric Trump who had resisted a subpoena and abruptly canceled an interview scheduled for the previous month. In September, Judge Arthur Engoron ordered him to sit for a deposition by October 7; he was deposed on October 5 and invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination over 500 times.
On September 2, 2021, Judge Engoron ordered the organization to submit a report explaining what it was doing to comply with subpoenas from the OAG, one of which dated back to December 2019. If this request was not met by October 15, an electronic discovery firm was to be commissioned to review the company's records. On December 1, James subpoenaed Donald Trump in the civil case, with the intent of deposing him on January 7, 2022. Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr. were issued subpoenas in the matter the same day.
On December 20, 2021, Trump's lawyer Alina Habba filed a lawsuit in federal court against James, alleging that her case against the former president was "guided solely by political animus and a desire to harass, intimidate, and retaliate against a private citizen who she views as a political opponent" and that his civil rights were being violated. The next month, James filed a motion requesting that Trump's suit be dismissed, arguing that he was only trying to block his deposition. In May 2022, U.S. District Court Judge Brenda K. Sannes held a hearing in the matter and dismissed the lawsuit. In June, Trump filed a federal notice of appeal. In August, Habba requested that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit revive the lawsuit. In January 2023, Trump's team withdrew the appeal, with Habba asserting that this was done "for strategic purposes".
On January 3, 2022, James and a lawyer for the organization filed a court document naming Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr. as respondents in the civil case. Additionally, the filing noted that the two Trumps and their father had moved to block their subpoenas on the premise that the AG was attempting to sidestep due process to gather evidence against them in the related criminal case. According to a legal expert cited by The New York Times, this is the responsibility of the defendants' lawyers to prove, but while the Trumps could invoke their right against self-incrimination during their testimony, refusal to testify could be cited in the civil case. James argued that the Trumps were using a continued pattern of "delay tactics" to keep her from interviewing them under oath. On January 10, Habba filed a motion seeking a stay of proceedings to allow an injunction against James on the same essential basis as Trump's lawsuit against the AG. At a political rally on January 15, Trump showed a video compilation of James referring to him as an "illegitimate president" and calling attention to his finances; this ended with the text "unhinged liberal" placed over James's face. At another rally two weeks later, Trump said of James and Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis (both of whom are African Americans and were scrutinizing the legality of actions by Trump): "If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protest we have ever had." On January 31, James filed a motion arguing that her case "presents no emergency requiring the extraordinary relief of a preliminary injunction". She also clarified that her remarks against Trump had been made while campaigning in the 2018 New York AG election, stating, "I pursue cases based on evidence ... the politics stop at my door."
On January 18, 2022, James filed a motion to compel Trump and his two oldest children to appear in court and provide documents, stating that "Thus far in our investigation, we have uncovered significant evidence that suggests Donald J. Trump and the Trump Organization falsely and fraudulently valued multiple assets and misrepresented those values to financial institutions for economic benefit." Additionally, James accused Trump of making misstatements to the IRS. Investigators stated that the "focus of the subpoena, and the investigation, is Mr. Trump's statement of financial condition," alleging that Trump's financial statements were used to secure more than $300 million in loans, and that these "were generally inflated as part of a pattern to suggest that Mr. Trump's net worth was higher than it otherwise would have appeared". According to the AG's motion, over 930,000 documents had been provided by the organization in response to subpoenas and about a dozen employees and former employees had provided testimony. However, of over five million documents provided by the company overall, only three were provided by Trump himself; two of these were cited in the AG's motion, in addition to Trump's federal income tax information, which he approved the release of to the AG. Trump's handwriting and signature are present on some of the hard-copy documents.