Last weekend, New York Attorney General Letitia James took a break from tweeting about Donald Trump. She celebrated St. Patrick’s Day… and started a big new political scandal.
According to a Friday filing obtained by the New York Post, the attorney general enabled the same kind of fraud she claimed former President Donald Trump committed… and she avoided prosecution.
The attorney general sued Trump for allegedly inflating the value of his assets for the sake of securing more favorable loans. Trump lost the suit, and he now faces a fine of more than $450 million. In order to appeal the ruling, he would need to post a cash bond of the same size.
However, in the 2010s, James enabled a nonprofit to inflate the value of its real estate and secure an unfairly risky loan. She even stopped the nonprofit from selling a building and paying its debts.
In 2017, investor James Doyle joined the board of the American Irish Historical Society, housed in an old mansion across from Central Park. In his lawsuit, Doyle recalls being convinced to value the mansion at $80 million, and he loaned the society $3 million to help it avoid foreclosure.
However, the organization made only a few of its mandatory payments to Doyle. Ultimately, the organization tried to sell the building for only $52 million in 2019, and it later reduced the price to $44 million.
At the time, James objected to the sale. New York requires its attorney general to approve any sale of a nonprofit’s asset, according to James. She wanted to keep the building in nonprofit hands to make it more accessible to the public, and she admitted to receiving a petition to quash the sale.
“It’s an amazing place,” James reportedly told The Irish Voice at the time. “We had to save it, had to save it … One day people can come in there and enjoy it again.”
Doyle was still owed millions of dollars at this point in 2020. As of 2023, Doyle still hadn’t received his payments, and later that year he started the process of — for lack of a better word — foreclosing.
On Friday, Doyle finally sued. He asked the court to subpoena James for all manner of records… and his legal team accused James of hypocrisy.
Doyle’s legal team claims to have been subjected to “fraudulently inflated valuations” of the mansion.
Sound familiar?
In particular, Doyle claims to have been misinformed about the building’s “air rights,” the ability to construct a taller structure in the same spot.
“In reality, there were no ‘air rights’ and the actual value is closer to $20 million,” Doyle’s lawyers said, according to legal filings obtained by the NY Post. “[The society] made a gross over-valuation.”
Doyle’s lawyer Tim Parlatore told the NY Post, “This organization fraudulently inflated the value of their building to induce my client into giving them a mortgage which Tish James is now trying to help these fraudsters avoid having to repay. The theory of fraud Tish James accused the Trump Organization of engaging in is identical to the fraud she is aiding and abetting here.”
The Horn editorial team