Looks like New York AG Letitia James has won and Donald Trump has caved
When a judge held Donald Trump in contempt of court and hit him with $10,000 daily fines until he fully complied with New York Attorney General Letitia James’ document production requests, it meant Trump was going to lose one way or the other. Would he cough up the incriminating documents, or would he let the fines ultimately pile up to a higher dollar amount than his presumably dwindling cash position?
Last week the judge ruled that Trump must comply by the end of this week, and that if he did, the judge would cap the fines at $110,000. Now it turns out Trump has complied today – sort of. He paid the $110,000 fine, which was expected. There’s no such thing as just not paying a contempt of court fine, because a pissed off judge can do just about anything he or she wants in the name of enforcing contempt of court.
CNN is also reporting this: “According to the AG’s office, all responsive documents have now been produced.” This sounds like Trump has indeed turned over the specific documents that Letitia James had subpoenaed. This would be remarkable, given that Trump fought so hard in court trying to avoid turning over these documents. But once a judge has held you in contempt, you’re truly out of stall tactics, and you have to worry that the judge might become angry enough to simply throw you in a holding cell.
Notably, CNN is reporting that Trump has failed to produce the sworn statements about the “Trump Organization’s document retention and destruction policy” that the judge has also demanded. It’s not clear if that’s merely taking longer to pull together, or if Trump is afraid to provide these statements for fear of committing perjury in the process. We’ll find out soon enough, as the outraged judge is clearly not going to let any of this go.
But as far as what Letitia James was attempting to get from Donald Trump, it appears she has indeed now gotten it. Keep in mind that Michael Cohen has said he believes he’s already provided these same documents to investigators. This had led us to wonder if James already has the documents and only subpoenaed them in the hope of nailing him for felony obstruction of justice if it turns out he destroyed the documents in response to the subpoena.
In any case, Donald Trump was by definition the final witness in Letitia James’ civil probe into the Trump Organization. Now that she’s apparently done with him, she’ll be announcing her findings and penalties soon. We expect she’ll hit the Trump Organization with fines that’ll bankrupt it, and begin taking its assets. We’re also looking forward to finding out if James has also taken over the related Trump criminal probe from the Manhattan DA.
