NEW YORK, Nov 22 (Reuters) – A New York judge has scheduled a trial for October 2023 against former U.S. President Donald Trump, three of his adult children and the Trump Organization in a lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James, accusing them of fraudulently. overestimating Trump’s real estate company assets and net worth.
Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron set the trial date during a contentious hearing Tuesday after the Trumps’ motions the night before to dismiss the civil suit.
“I ruled on all these issues. It seems to me that the facts are the same. The law is the same. The parties are the same,” Engoron told Alina Habba, Trump’s lawyer. “You can’t keep making the same argument after you’ve already lost.”
Habba had accused the judge of bias. Trump, a Republican, has accused James, a Democrat, of suing him because he doesn’t like him or his policies.
In his lawsuit filed on September 21, James accused Trump, his company, his children Donald Jr, Eric and Ivanka and others of inflating Trump’s assets by billions of dollars in a decade of lies to banks and insurers. James called the fraud a “thumper.”
The complaint seeks $250 million in damages. It also seeks to bar the Trumps from doing business in the state and bar Trump and his company from acquiring New York real estate for five years.
Engoron is expected to rule on the motions to dismiss in early January. Trump is already appealing Engoron’s order requiring an independent watchdog to oversee his company.
The trial, scheduled for Oct. 2, 2023, and other legal issues could complicate Trump’s campaign, announced last week, for the presidency in 2024.
The Trump Organization is now on trial in another Manhattan courtroom on criminal tax fraud charges.
Also, last week, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to oversee two criminal investigations, one related to the FBI’s seizure of government documents from Trump’s Florida home and the other examining Trump’s role in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Trump also faces a criminal investigation in Georgia into whether he interfered with the results of the 2020 election in that state.
He has called these cases and investigations politically motivated and called Engoron a “puppet judge” for James.
In seeking to dismiss the case brought by James, Trump argued that the attorney general lacked authority to bring a lawsuit aimed at “getting him” when neither the public nor the market was harmed.
“Who can win with this highly politicized farce [sic]other than the politically engaged New York State Attorney General?” Trump’s filing said.
Other defendants also urged the dismissals.
Lawyers for Trump’s children called the lawsuit a “textbook example of throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks.” Ivanka Trump’s lawyers said there were no allegations that she had lied or defrauded anyone.
Former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg and his controller Jeffrey McConney also asked to have the claims against them dismissed. Both testified as prosecution witnesses in the Manhattan criminal trial in which prosecutors accused the company of engaging in tax fraud for 15 years.
Reporting by Karen Freifeld and Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Will Dunham
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