A commercial real estate firm held in contempt of court for failing to hand over records on its appraisals of several Trump Organization properties to New York's attorney general has turned over nearly 36,000 documents, court filings show.
New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron had found Cushman & Wakefield in contempt last month for not producing documents in state Attorney General Letitia James' civil probe into the Trump Organization's business practices and ordered the firm to pay a $10,000-a-day fine until it complied.
In a letter to the judge late Friday, James' office said it has now "received Cushman’s production, which amounts to about 35,867 documents since entry of this Court’s contempt order." The letter said the attorney general's office was joining with Cushman in asking the judge to "dissolve the Contempt Order and hold any contempt purged, without any fines due or owing."
Cushman's and James' spokespeople did not immediately respond requests for comment.
James’ office is considering whether to file a civil suit against former President Donald Trump and his company over their business practices and has said in court filings that it has “uncovered substantial evidence establishing numerous misrepresentations in Mr. Trump’s financial statements provided to banks, insurers, and the Internal Revenue Service.”
In court filings, the attorney general's office said it also discovered "serious problems" with some of Cushman's appraisals for the Trump Organization over the years, including 40 Wall Street, his Seven Springs property in New York, and his Los Angeles golf club.
James subpoenaed the company last September and again in February, court documents show. The judge said the real estate firm had “partially responded” to the subpoenas in March before it refused to provide the remaining records.
A spokesperson for the real estate company said in a statement last month that the company had gone to "extreme lengths" to comply with the judge's order.
"We have gone to great expense and effort to quickly identify, collect, review and produce the massive set of documents requested by the OAG, and we have now produced over hundreds of thousands of pages of documents and over 650 appraisals since the last subpoena was issued in February 2022,” the spokesperson said then.
The same judge also found Donald Trump in civil contempt of court earlier this year for failing to comply with a subpoena from the attorney general's office. Engoron lifted the contempt finding in June after Trump complied with the terms of the subpoena and paid $110,000 in fines.
