The deadline for submitting the necessary documents requested by the New York prosecutor’s Donald Trump as part of an investigation into opaque business practices expired on March 3. In fact, Trump’s lawyers asked for – and received – a new extension for March 31, which also expired without result. After all this, a New York court fined the former president $ 10,000 for each day for not delivering the documents. A relevant request was submitted by the Attorney General on April 8. Asked by a reporter if the ruling signaled the start of a Trump-type judicial inquiry, New York Attorney General Leticia James said succinctly: “I think the verdict was clear.”
Among other things, the judicial authorities suspect that in some cases Donald Trump overpriced real estate in order to repay bank loans on preferential terms, while in other cases he underpriced them in order to pay less taxes and reduced insurance premiums. As Daniel Alonso, a partner at New York-based law firm Buckley LLP, explains, Donald Trump “has withheld the documents in a kind of ‘political disobedience.’ But now there is a fine of $ 10,000 a day. He has the key to stop this story. “Once he delivers the documents, the fine is revoked.”
“Shadows” in the 2024 election campaign
For decades, Donald Trump has faced charges of unfair business practices. It is unknown at this time what he will do after leaving the post. At 75, he is talking about a new candidate in the 2024 presidential election. Trump hopes to return triumphantly to the White House, while he has not yet conceded defeat by Joe Biden and the Democratic Party in the 2020 presidential election. his lawyers claim that the relevant decision of the court is “unjustified and constitutes a political plot”.
Lawyer Daniel Alonso estimates that Trump’s legal staff will appeal the court ruling on fines, but as he points out “the delivery of documents is not an optional case. The same applies to the implementation of court decisions. It is very unusual for someone to say ‘I am not going to comply with this decision’. We must all comply with the decisions of the courts, there is no exception for a former president … “
Is the prosecution “catching accusations”?
In mid-February, the court had asked Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka and his son, Donald Jr., to testify in the case. At the same time, he had set the deadline of March 8 for the submission of the necessary documents. Leticia James’s preliminary investigation began in 2019. Already at that time, Donald Trump was accusing the Democratic Party of “fishing expedition” against him (“fishing expedition”) and therefore refuses to hand over the documents requested the judicial authorities.
Lawyer Daniel Alonso’s comment: “This is nonsense. The Attorney General explains convincingly that these are tax and insurance documents that everyone has. You and I have kept similar documents somewhere in our files. The accusation that someone is illegally ‘fishing’ accusations and evidence against us is not valid … “
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