New York AG asks judge to probe Allen Weisselberg emails after he’s accused of perjury
New York State Attorney General Letitia James requested that the judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s civil fraud case order a forensic examination of Trump Organization emails showing Allen Weisselberg’s communications with Forbes after the magazine accused the former executive of lying under oath during his testimony last week, The Messenger reports. Weisselberg testified during his first day on the witness stand that he “never focused” on calculating the square footage of the former president’s Trump Tower triplex, the size of which Trump had presented as nearly three times its actual size. But the co-defendant’s second day of testimony ended abruptly after Forbes levied the accusation based on “old emails and notes” outside of the attorney general’s possession.
James asked New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron Thursday to empower a court monitor to investigate and determine if the Trump Organization had produced all relevant information. “The failure to produce these later emails indicates a breakdown somewhere in the process of preserving, collecting, reviewing and producing documents,” the letter, signed by James’ senior counsel Kevin Wallace, reads. “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. The failure is also suggestive of potentially broader issues in the production process.”
“If the Monitor determines that responsive information was not produced, she can provide an assessment of where in the process the failure occurred and propose remedies to ameliorate those issues,” Wallace added. Pages of Weisselberg’s emails already submitted into evidence — and a few that have not — followed the letter. James has requested that the monitor submit a report with her findings of the “likely omissions” by Oct. 27, the end of next week.