NY judge holds Trump appraiser in contempt, fines it $10,000 a day
By Kara Scannell
A New York judge fined the Trump Organization’s former appraiser $10,000 a day after holding it in civil contempt of court for failing to comply with subpoenas from the New York attorney general’s office.
Judge Arthur Engoron said the appraiser, Cushman & Wakefield, “has only itself to blame if it chose to treat the looming deadlines cavalierly.”
Appraisals performed by Cushman, which worked for the Trump Organization for years until it resigned following the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, are central to the civil investigation into the accuracy of the Trump Organization’s financial statements.
Cushman had previously fought the subpoena and challenged it in court. Last month a New York appeals court said it would not block the state from enforcing the subpoena.
The company said it has gone to “extreme lengths” to cooperate with the court and the attorney general’s office, and plans to appeal.
“We have gone to great expense and effort to quickly identify, collect, review and produce the massive set of documents requested by the OAG, and we have now produced over hundreds of thousands of pages of documents and over 650 appraisals since the last subpoena was issued in February 2022,” a Cushman spokesman said.
“Cushman disagrees with any suggestion that the firm has not exercised diligence and good faith in complying with the Court’s order, and we will be appealing this decision,” the spokesman added.
This story is breaking and will be updated.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.
