New York State Attorney General Letitia James has blasted Donald Trump and his 38-year-old son Eric Trump for avoiding formal service of the 220-page fraud lawsuit filed against them last month.
According to reports, 14 of the 16 named defendants have formally accepted service of the suit, with the 76-year-old former POTUS and his son, Eric, the Executive Vice President of Development and Acquisitions for The Trump Organization, being the remaining two.
If you'll recall, the former president, three of his adult children – Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Eric Trump – as well as the Trump Organization as a whole are currently being sued by James for fraud over the past decade, which includes allegedly violating state criminal laws and regularly inflating the value of its assets to deceive lenders and secure hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and tax breaks. James is reportedly seeking $250 million in damages, and also wants to permanently prevent the Trumps from conducting business in New York.
According to a new filing at the end of September, James' office said that "gamesmanship" had blocked the way of Trump and his son being served the lawsuit, saying: "The fact that formal service is only being completed now is because of gamesmanship by defendants and not any lack of diligent efforts by the office." The filing then went on to say that Alina Habba, an attorney for Trump, "never responded" to the emails that requested she accept service on his behalf.
We understand why the Trumps may be trying to avoid the suit for as long as they can, as Michael Cohen, Trump's former attorney and fixer, said that the lawsuit could very well "financially destroy" the former president and even result in him going to prison. "Donald Trump has committed tax evasion, bank fraud, wire fraud, misrepresentation," Cohen told Salon ahead of the release of his second book, Revenge. "He will not be able to get past that, and that is criminal."
Cohen himself went to prison in 2019 for tax fraud and campaign finance violations, and according to James last month, helped kick off the three-year investigation into the Trumps when he "testified before Congress and shed light on this misconduct." Back in 2019, Cohen told the House Oversight Committee: "It was my experience that Mr. Trump inflated his total assets when it served his purposes, such as trying to be listed amongst the wealthiest people in Forbes and deflated his assets to reduce his real estate taxes."
