“I will remind everyone that this investigation only began after Michael Cohen, his former attorney, his former attorney, testified before Congress and shed light on this misconduct,” he said. The question that sparked Mr. Cohen’s response came in 2019 from Ms. James’s New York colleague, Democratic Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. In 2019, Mr. Cohen testified against his former boss before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. At the time, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who the previous year had defeated former House Democratic Caucus Chairman Joe Crowley in a primary in New York’s 14th District, raised questions about whether Mr. Trump ever provided inflated assets to an insurance company. “Yes,” Mr. Cohen said in response. When Ms Ocasio-Cortez asked who else knew Mr Trump was doing this, she said: “Allen Weiselberg, Ron Lieberman and Matthew Calamari.” The lawsuit also names Mr. Lieberman, the former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization. Specifically, it said that Mr. Weisselberg helped Mr. Trump make fraudulent financial statements about his properties. “Mr. Trump made it known through Mr. Weiselberg that he wanted his net worth in his declarations to increase every year, and the declarations were the vehicle by which his net worth was fraudulently inflated by billions of dollars year after year,” it said. Ms. James’s office. in a statement. During the hearing, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez continued to ask about Mr. Trump’s tax returns. “And where is the committee going to find more information on that, do you think we need to look at his financial statements and his tax returns,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said. “Yes, and you will find it in the Trump Org,” Mr. Cohen said. The lawsuit alleges that Mr. Trump fraudulently inflated his net worth by millions of dollars so that banks could lend him and his businesses money on more favorable terms that would otherwise not have been available. Ms. James’s announcement Wednesday morning was just the first bad news about Trump and his allies to emerge during the day. Later Wednesday, multiple news outlets reported that conservative activist Virginia “Ginny” Thomas — wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas — had entered into an agreement to voluntarily appear for an interview with the House Select Committee on Jan. 6. Ms. Thomas is under scrutiny for her actions between Nov. 7, 2020 (the day most news outlets announced the 2020 election for Joe Biden) and Jan. 6, 2021, when a riotous crowd of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. in the hope of preventing a certification of Mr. Biden’s victory. He reportedly contacted state lawmakers in two states won by Biden – Arizona and Wisconsin – to pressure them to step in and overturn Mr Trump’s defeat. According to NBC News, Ms. Thomas was also in contact with John Eastman, the former law professor and Trump adviser who devised a plan for Congress to block Biden’s victory with the help of fake Electoral College certificates. The former president was also dealt another major blow late Wednesday when a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a Florida federal judge’s order that effectively barred the Justice Department from using classified documents found at his Palm Beach home to to promote a criminal. investigation against him and his associates. Judges Robin Rosenbaum, Britt Grant and Andrew Brasher said they agreed with the government’s argument that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon “probably erred in exercising jurisdiction to compel the United States to use the classified records in its criminal investigation and to require the United States States to submit the marked classified documents to a special master for review.” Mr. Trump has repeatedly described both the New York lawsuit and the Justice Department investigation as examples of partisan witch hunts designed to harm him politically. Speaking on Fox News host Sean Hannity’s eponymous program on Wednesday, the former president said he rejected an offer to settle the three-year investigation into whether his companies committed massive amounts of fraud because paying “even a small amount” would was similar to the liability admission. “I met with them. I really thought they wanted to settle, but I didn’t want to settle, because how can you, even if I paid a very small amount, admit your guilt,” he said.
