Court monitor Barbara Jones sent her letter to Justice Engoron, who will determine whether to ban Trump from New York real estate for life

Court monitor Barbara Jones sent her letter to Justice Engoron, who will determine whether to ban Trump from New York real estate for life

The court-appointed monitor overseeing Donald Trump’s businesses told a judge on Friday that the former president’s financial information has contained “incomplete” or “inconsistent” disclosures containing “errors.”

“I have identified certain deficiencies in the financial information that I have reviewed, including disclosures that are either incomplete, present results inconsistently, and/or contain errors,” former federal judge Barbara Jones, tasked with scrutinizing the former president’s business empire, wrote in a 12-page letter.

Though she described Trump and his businesses as “cooperative” with her investigation, Jones added that “information required to be submitted to me pursuant to the terms of the monitorship order and review protocol has, at times, been lacking in completeness and timeliness.”

  • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
    237·
    10 months ago

    So this monitor, she can’t come to a conclusion about whether fraud occurred, although there were persistent errors in financial disclosure of the Trump businesses, but if she can’t come to a conclusion, what is the function of the monitor in the first place?

    And why is the judge taking her information into consideration if she can’t come to him decision either way?

    • Blueberrydreamer@lemmynsfw.com
      29·
      10 months ago

      My understanding is that the monitor’s job is to report information to the judge, not make decisions for them. Offering up her own accusations of fraud could easily be overstepping her position.

      • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
        311·
        10 months ago

        Oh, she goes so out of her way to talk about the ongoing fraud in the Trump organizations but can’t arrive at a definite decision that I assumed it was part of her role to come to a decision.

        • SPRUNT@lemmy.world
          13·
          10 months ago

          Think if it as an equivalent to “I’m not a lawyer, but…”. or when an x-ray technician says “I’m not a doctor, but…”

          She has no legal authority to make a final decision, only to relay the facts of her investigation. If she were to say “TFG is guilty”, it would open an avenue for Orange Hitler to contest something on legal grounds for improper process or some other such nonsense.

          Given the unprecedented (starting to hate that word) scope of everything surrounding the fake-tan meatsack, “Cover Your Ass” is the name of the game for the prosecution.

    • danl@lemmy.world
      7·
      10 months ago

      Reads to me that, in most of the cases, she doesn’t see the final documents provided to 3rd parties. She can ask Trump org for what they provided and if they don’t hand it over, the court could presumably subpoena them.

      For most of the instances she references though, she pointed out issues, Trump org said they’d fix them, but her scope doesn’t include asking the banks if they finally got the corrected version or not.

      Given the scale of inaccuracies and errors though (such as not including $1.6M in management fees in a line item called “Management Fees…” and not including any depreciation for golf courses), it certainly smells like the court would at least want to dig deeper.