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Trump’s Long-Time Accounting Firm Cuts Ties Over Financial Statements

Lakshmi

It is unclear whether Mazars’ break with the Trumps will have any bearing on the district attorney’s criminal investigation into Mr. Trump. The firm has been cooperating with that investigation, and Mr. Trump’s main accountant at Mazars has already testified before a grand jury hearing evidence about Mr. Trump.

The office of the district attorney, Alvin Bragg, declined to comment.

Both investigations still face obstacles. While the statements may contain exaggerated estimates of Mr. Trump’s property values, those same documents also include a number of disclaimers, including acknowledgments that Mr. Trump’s accountants had neither audited nor authenticated his claims.

Another disclaimer notes that Mazars did “not express an opinion or provide any assurance about” the statements, a common caveat in statements of financial condition. The firm also disclosed that, while compiling the information for Mr. Trump, it had “become aware of departures from accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America.”

Mr. Trump’s lawyers would likely argue that his lenders, sophisticated financial institutions like Deutsche Bank, would not have relied on the statements when providing him loans.

Still, in her court filing last month, Ms. James highlighted potential misleading statements about the value of at least six Trump properties, including golf clubs in Westchester County, NY, and Scotland, as well as Mr. Trump’s own penthouse home in Trump Tower.

According to that filing, Mr. Trump claimed that the triplex apartment spanned 30,000 square feet, giving it an eye-popping value of $ 327 million. In truth, the apartment was 10,996 square feet.

Mr. Trump’s long-serving chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, later acknowledged to investigators that the company had overvalued the apartment by “give or take” $ 200 million.