On Thursday, New York Attorney General Letitia James requested a New York court to prosecute former President Donald Trump in civil contempt for allegedly refusing to comply with a court order requiring him to hand over specific papers for her investigation.
In February, State Judge Arthur Engoron ordered Trump to “fully cooperate” with the attorney general’s request for papers and information. The Trumps are appealing Engoron’s judgment that Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Ivanka Trump must cooperate with the attorney general’s summons for testimony.
The attorney general’s office said in a motion filed Thursday that Trump “did not comply at all” with the document subpoena, and that his attorneys said he would not produce “any” documents in response to the subpoena because his attorneys believe that if the documents exist, they will be held by the Trump Organization, and that the attorney general’s office “will just have to wait until the Trump Organization completes its production to get them.”
According to fresh files, her office agreed to extend the deadline for the materials from early March to March 31. Trump, however, instead of producing the records on the same day, filed 16 challenges to the subpoena’s requests.
Trump’s lawyers also gave the attorney general’s office with an affidavit from a Trump lawyer saying that the former President was unable to find the papers and that, if they did exist, they were in the care of the Trump Organization, which is subject to a different subpoena deadline.
On Thursday, James said that Trump’s lawyers’ answer amounted to “further delay and deception,” and that his concerns were made too late. Trump was “very likely to have been in possession, custody, or control of several papers” relevant to her inquiry, she claimed, and he failed to sufficiently disclose the efforts he made to find the requested records.
According to the petition, “Mr. Trump should now be placed in civil contempt and penalized in an amount adequate to force his compliance with the Court’s order and reimburse OAG for its expenses and expenditures involved with this motion.”
James is requesting a $10,000 per day fine, or any other sum the court considers “adequate to force his compliance with the Court’s February 2022 Order,” as well as reimbursement for the attorney general’s costs and fees in bringing the petition.
The Trump Organization is also the subject of a criminal investigation headed by the Manhattan district attorney, in addition to the civil probe James has begun. After the high-profile resignation of two top prosecutors, District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr.’s inquiry, which he inherited from his predecessor, Cyrus Vance, has been surrounded by public controversy.