Emails entered into evidence during Thursday's ongoing civil fraud trial suggested the former president puffed up his Trump Tower triplex with a special premium
When you're a star, they let you do it: Inflate your prized real-estate asset, that is, according to emails entered into evidence during testimony on Thursday by former President Donald Trump's co-defendant.
Former Trump Organization controller Jeffrey McConney, one of two former business associates named as defendants in the civil fraud case, faced pointed questioning from New York Attorney General Letitia James' team about one of the most eye-opening embellishments in the former president’s real estate portfolio: the Trump Tower triplex.
"I'm trying to value DJT's triplex," McConney wrote in an email dated Sept. 19, 2012, seeking information about the building, its asking price and its square footage.
In statements of financial condition, the former president falsely claimed that his Trump Tower triplex was 30,000 square feet. It was actually 10,966 square feet, and Engoron has already found that the discrepancy could only be explained by fraud. The email communications entered into the record on Thursday showed the backdrop of what the court found to have been a deception.
In one email, a Trump International Realty executive, Kathy Kaye, asked another, Kevin Sneddon, to provide McConney with the value of another triplex owned by a Saudi prince for comparison. (Neither Kaye nor Sneddon stands accused of wrongdoing.)
Sneddon replied that the prince’s triplex at Trump’s Heritage building at 240 Riverside Boulevard on the Upper West Side was worth $45 million, though the unit ultimately sold for $30 million in 2018, according to the New York Times.
In an email from 2013, Kaye said she believe Trump's triplex would fetch far higher due to his "celebrity."
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“Based on the activity in the luxury market and given how unique the apt is as well tied to celebrity, I don’t see how one would list below 8K per sq ft at this point. Which brings us to [$]240,000M.. 200,000M is a safe estimate," Kaye wrote, in an email explaining the genesis of that year's $200 million valuation.
Trump ultimately valued his own triplex far higher at $114 million in 2012, the same year as the email exchange, even though his property was in a far older building.
The attorney general's special counsel Andrew Amer presented the emails during confrontational direct examination. McConney's own lawyers may seek to elicit additional context on cross-examination.
Who is ex-Trump Organization controller Jeffrey McConney?
During his 35-year career inside Trump’s top company, McConney served as a senior vice president and a controller, a job responsible for all internal daily accounting operations. The government’s first witness Donald Bender, the Trump Organization’s outside accountant with Mazars, called him a former close friend, before their relationship fractured amid the swirl of civil and criminal fraud allegations.
Now, McConney’s tenure at the Trump Organization is over. He testified that he retired earlier this year with a $150,000 severance package, but that $125,000 of that amount remained outstanding. He latest title with some of his former colleagues is “co-defendant.”
James, the New York attorney general since January 2019, sued McConney along with the former president, his adult children Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Ivanka Trump, ex-chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, and numerous corporate entities associated with them in her fraud case.
Only Ivanka Trump succeeded in defeating those claims so far under the statute of limitations, but the others remain subject to Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron’s order finding them liable for fraud and dissolving their New York businesses.
The ongoing trial, now in its fourth day, seeks to disgorge any “ill-gotten gains” from the fraud and bar the defendants from ever serving as a director or officer in any New York corporation.
Trump’s assets are put under a microscope
In a new order released on Thursday, Engoron put some meat on the bones of an earlier one dissolving Trump’s business entities with additional clauses to prevent him from shuffling them off elsewhere.
Within seven days of the order, Trump and his co-defendants must provide the court’s monitor, retired federal judge Barbara Jones, with a list of all of the relevant entities, and inform her "whether and to what extent any third-party has an ownership, partnership, or membership interest in such entity."
They also must tell Jones about any “anticipated transfer of assets or liabilities to any other entity.”
There’s another Trump co-defendant on deck
At the end of Thursday's proceedings, the New York attorney general’s special counsel Andrew Amer indicated that McConney’s ongoing testimony will stretch through Friday, a day that trial typically adjourns early.
Trump’s attorney Christopher Kise indicated that he will file appellate papers in New York’s Appellate Division, First Department, on Friday morning, seeking to pause the ongoing fraud trial and Engoron’s ruling. That appellate court previously rejected Trump’s earlier bid to delay his civil trial.
Court will be closed on Monday in observance of Columbus Day, a federal holiday officially recognized in New York two years ago as Indigenous People’s Day.
That means the next witness to testify, Weisselberg, will take the stand on Tuesday morning. In August 2022, Weisselberg pleaded guilty to tax fraud, and he received a five-month sentence of incarceration this past January, a term that he’s already served.