Tempest in a triplex: Trump accused of failing to turn over fraud-trial documents relating to his NY penthouse

• A civil fraud trial, at which Trump risks being banned from doing business in NY, is in week three.
• NY officials are asking for a forensic search of Trump's files for never-produced trial evidence.

The Trump Organization may have failed to turn over fraud-trial evidence relating to the size of Donald Trump's triplex penthouse, New York officials alleged on Thursday, in demanding a new "forensic" search of the company's business records.

The existence of the allegedly missing evidence – a series of 2016 emails between Trump Org and Forbes magazine – only came to light last week, when Forbes described them in a story.

These emails should have been turned over some two years ago, in response to subpoenas from the New York Attorney General Letitia James, a lawyer for James wrote Thursday in a letter to the judge presiding over Trump's civil fraud trial.

The letter asks the judge to order a new "forensic" review of Trump Organization records to be conducted by the company's court-imposed independent monitor, Barbara Jones.

"The failure to produce these later emails indicates a breakdown somewhere in the process of preserving, collecting, reviewing and producing documents," Kevin C. Wallace, the AG's senior enforcement counsel, wrote to New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron.

"This failure also comes in the face of a years-long process to ensure a complete response to OAG's subpoenas and multiple affidavits on behalf of the Trump Organization attesting to the completion of their production obligations," Wallace wrote, using the acronym for office of the attorney general.

"The failure is also suggestive of potentially broader issues in the production process," he added.

The last time Wallace complained of broader issues in the production of evidence was in August, when he raised the possibility of seeking penalties against Trump for so-called "spoliation" – the intentional failure to preserve documents for pending or reasonably foreseeable litigation.

The potential penalties would be sought after the trial, and include fines and a contempt-of-court ruling.

The Trump Organization has turned over some 900,000 documents to the attorney general's office over the past two years, and its lawyers have frequently countered that they simply had nothing more to turn over.

But the AG's office has complained, also frequently, that key documents, particularly personal business records in the specific custody of Trump himself, never materialized.

"In some instances, it's been pulling teeth to get documents," Wallace complained during a hearing in April of last year.

Thursday's letter shows that following last week's Forbes story, the AG's office was able to find some of the allegedly omitted penthouse emails among the 900,000 Trump Organization documents in their custody. But these had not been turned over by the Trump Organization, the letter said.

Instead, officials found them among some emails turned over separately by a non-Trump real estate agency that had been copied on them.

The letter asks the judge to order the independent monitor, retired federal judge Barbara Jones, to "undertake a forensic examination of electronic data held by the Trump Organization for the very brief period August to September of 2016 to determine if all responsive information has been produced."

According to Forbes, the allegedly missing emails could be used to impeach the trial testimony of Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization's former chief financial officer and a key witness for the state.

The emails show Weisselberg was heavily involved in communicating with Forbes about the worth of Trump's triplex penthouse apartment atop Trump Tower in Manhattan.

Weisselberg had testified he paid little heed to the worth of the property, calling it a "de minimis" asset in the larger picture of Trump's net worth.

The triplex is an important issue at Trump's ongoing trial; the state argues that Trump falsely inflated the value of the property by claiming it was three times its actual size.

The triplex is frequently cited by James, who has alleged that Trump inflated his worth by as much as $3.6 billion a year in annual net worth statements he issued to banks, insurers, and others.