Courts

Court Orders Trump Organization To Cough Up Those Cell Phones In NY AG Probe

Tick tock, time is running out on the statute of limitations here.

By  
on

Metric_clockHaving apparently disposed of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s criminal investigation of the Trump Organization, the former president’s eponymous company has now turned its attention to completing the project of running out the clock on New York Attorney General Letitia James’s civil probe.

In New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron’s courtroom Monday morning, Trump’s lawyers explained that they were working around the clock to comply with the AG’s investigative demands and would definitely, certainly have turned over all the requested material by April 29. Assuming that’s the case, it will leave exactly one day for the OAG to decide whether to file a civil action against the company before the tolling agreement expires on April 30.

Under a September 2, 2021 Stipulation, the company agreed to employ HaystackID, a document production company, to help it comply with the state’s subpoenas. In dueling memos last week, the OAG accused the Trump Organization of dragging out the search and demanded HaystackID furnish it with more regular and detailed reports of its progress.

The company responded indignantly that “The OAG continues to falsely create the appearance of impropriety and/or inadequacy.” Insisting that, much like the former president’s hands, there was no problem there, attorney Lawrence Rosen huffed that it was in fact the OAG making unreasonable demands, while “TTO has been working tirelessly and at great expense to address the ever widening and never ending demands made by the OAG and its ‘scorched earth’ policy for the collection of that information.”

At yesterday’s hearing, attended by The Daily Beast’s Jose Pagliery, the two sides continued their sniping. But it seems that the OAG won the latest round.

“I took a look at the reports you’ve provided and they seemed very barebones. The reports you gave don’t offer much information, quite frankly,” Justice Engoron’s principal law clerk, Allison R. Greenfield, told a representative from HaystackID.

And the judge agreed, instructing the company to begin filing weekly reports so that the court and the OAG will be able to evaluate the progress of document production before it’s too late for them to address any discrepancies.

Sponsored

In a subsequent written order, he specified that the weekly submissions should include granular information on the location and custodian of all cellphones not yet produced, plus an indication of whether the original timeline agreed to in the Stipulation could be feasibly adhered to. The parties were instructed to return for another status conference on April 25.

“I don’t just want a little more meat. I want specific information about these searches. I want detailed reports. We’re winding down this whole investigation. We want this to end at some point for numerous reasons,” Justice Engoron warned the company.

No doubt the Trump Organization will eagerly turn over all the requested documents … by December.

Judge Demands Trump Org Quit Stalling on Turning Over Evidence [Daily Beast]

Sponsored

Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

Topics

, , , , , ,