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New York State Attorney General Letitia James at a news conference in August last year.
Photo:
Kathy Willens/Associated Press
The New York attorney general’s office’s investigation of former President
Donald Trump’s
business now has a criminal component, a spokesman said Tuesday night, joining the Manhattan district attorney’s office probe and expanding a monthslong inquiry that until now had been focused on civil fraud.
“We have informed the Trump Organization that our investigation into the organization is no longer purely civil in nature,” said
Fabien Levy,
a spokesman for the attorney general’s office. “We are now actively investigating the Trump Organization in a criminal capacity, along with the Manhattan DA.”
The Manhattan district attorney’s office is conducting an investigation into possible bank fraud and other potential crimes. Separately, the top local prosecutor in the Atlanta area is probing whether Mr. Trump improperly tried to influence election officials last year.
The Trump Organization didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the investigation, which was reported earlier by CNN.
Mr. Trump has previously called the investigation by New York Attorney General
Letitia James,
a Democrat, a partisan “witch hunt.”
The New York attorney general’s civil investigation became public last August, when the office said it was looking into whether the Trump Organization and President Trump improperly inflated the value of Mr. Trump’s assets in financial filings. Attorney general’s office investigators have probed several Trump properties, including his sprawling upstate New York estate Seven Springs, a Financial District skyscraper at 40 Wall St., and Trump International Hotel and Tower Chicago, a hotel and residential complex, according to court filings.
The New York attorney general has limited capacity to investigate crimes. Its criminal investigatory authority extends to the sale of securities, labor-law violations and Medicaid fraud, among other matters. It can also be asked to investigate crimes by the head of several New York state agencies, including the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance.
—Deanna Paul contributed to this article.
Write to Michael Amon at michael.amon@wsj.com
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Appeared in the May 19, 2021, print edition as ‘Criminal Probe Is Opened Into Trump’s Business.’
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