Donald Trump inflated net worth by $3.6B a year, AG charges

Donald Trump jacked up his net worth by at least $3.6 billion a year, New York Attorney General Letitia James charged in a court filing Friday — a far higher level of alleged book-cooking than previously laid out in court papers.

The court filing revelation comes as a trial looms in the state’s $250 million fraud lawsuit against Trump and his business.

According to James’ office, the net-worth tinkering by the former president, the Trump Organization, and Eric and Donald Trump Jr. allegedly let them cheat lenders out of “hundreds of millions of dollars” — and was “actually far greater” than what James laid out in court papers last month accusing Trump of overstating the value of his assets by as much as $2.2 billion a year.

James’ office last month had relied on what it called “undisputed evidence” about Trump’s alleged decade-long lies on financial disclosure forms to secure favorable interest rates from banks — including the false claim that his penthouse triplex in Midtown’s Trump Tower was 33,000 square feet when it was actually closer to 11,000 square feet.

But in Friday’s bombshell Manhattan Supreme Court filing, the attorney general said the office has accounting experts ready to testify at an October trial that Trump, his family and company overstated the value of their various assets “by billions more.”

The new allegations are based on what James’ office called typical “methodologies” an informed buyer and seller in the real estate marketplace would take into account when figuring the value of a property.

The hard knock got an immediate response from Trump’s camp, which fired back with its own filing posted to the docket Friday morning — calling the AG’s suit a “crusade” against the Trump family and asserting that many of James’ claims should be time-barred because the statute of limitations on them has run out.

“In the NY AG’s obsessive, compulsive attempt to ‘get’ President Trump, she even continues to unfairly drag his children Eric Trump and Donald Trump, Jr. along for the ride,” Trump’s lawyers wrote.

“It’s time for the court to put an end to this crusade by dismissing this action in its entirety,” the Trump attorneys added.

James’ office has urged Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron to issue a pretrial ruling in its favor on claims that Trump, his family and his company committed fraud, falsified financial records, and made false entries in business documents, among other allegations.

The lawsuit aims to force Trump to pay back to the state millions in penalties, halt Trump’s ability to run businesses in New York and bar him and his team from buying commercial property for several years.

James has also urged the court to sanction Trump’s legal team $20,000 for making “frivolous” arguments.

Both sides are due back in court for a hearing on Sept. 22.