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The Trump Organization's accounting firm said a decade of financial statements for Donald Trump can't be relied upon and that it won't do any new work for the company, a development New York attorney general Letitia James said showed the urgency of her civil fraud investigation.
The firm, Mazars, notified Alan Garten, the chief lawyer for the Trump Organization, of its decision last week in a letter, which James included in a court filing on Monday urging a judge to order Trump to comply with her subpoena and document requests.
The state is investigating what it says was a pattern of potential fraud involving the manipulation of valuations of key Trump properties. The probe by James, a Democrat, is one of several by law enforcement into Trump's businesses, including a criminal investigation by the Manhattan district attorney.
Lawyers for Trump, who is widely expected to again seek the nomination in the next presidential election, have long accused James of targeting him for political purposes.
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Mazars said it decided to sever ties to Trump after conducting its own investigation and based on filings by the attorney general in January. The firm said it didn’t conclude the financial statements, from the years 2011 to 2020, contained material discrepancies, but decided that the “totality of circumstances” were at a point where it faced a conflict of interest with the Trump Organization.
“As a result, we are not able to provide any new work product for the Trump Organization,” Mazars said in the letter.
The firm declined a request for additional comment in a prepared statement, citing client confidentiality. A lawyer for Trump didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
James said she has detailed her "good-faith basis" for the state's investigation in earlier court filings. "Respondents' failure to address – much less rebut – the facts alleged in those submissions is a concession as to the gravity and extent of their conduct and confirms the merits of this investigation," she said. – Bloomberg