Accounting firm cuts ties with Trump, retracts financial statements
NEW YORK — Former President Donald Trump’s longtime accounting firm abruptly cut ties with his family business last week amid ongoing criminal and civil investigations into whether Trump illegally inflated the value of his assets, court documents filed Monday show.
In a Feb. 9 letter to the Trump Organization, the accounting firm notified the company of its decision and disclosed that it could no longer stand behind annual financial statements it prepared for Trump. The firm, Mazars USA, compiled the financial statements based on information the former president and his company provided.
The letter instructed the Trump Organization to essentially retract the documents, known as statements of financial condition, from 2011 to 2020. In the letter, Mazars noted the firm had not “as a whole” found material discrepancies between the information the Trump Organization provided and the actual value of Trump’s assets. But given what it called “the totality of circumstances,” the letter directed the Trump Organization to notify anyone who received the statements that they should no longer rely on them.
The statements, which Trump used to secure loans, are at the center of the two law enforcement investigations into him and his company. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James have been investigating whether Trump used the statements to defraud his lenders into providing him the best possible loan terms.
The Trump Organization declined to comment.
The revelations appeared in the new court documents filed by James’ office, which is seeking to question Trump and two of his adult children under oath as part of her investigation.
Trump’s lawyers had asked a judge to prohibit the questioning, and in response, James’ office argued in court papers last month the company had engaged in “fraudulent or misleading” practices.
Her filing Monday — which marked her latest attempt to press ahead with questioning Trump as well as Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump — included a copy of the Mazars letter, signed by the accounting firm’s general counsel.
The brief letter could bolster James’ investigation, which has focused partly on the statements and whether they overvalued former President Trump’s various hotels, golf clubs and other properties.
Mazars said it concluded that the statements were no longer reliable based in part on the attorney general’s earlier filings, its own investigations and information the accountants received from “internal and external sources.” The letter added that Mazars “performed its work in accordance with professional standards.”
Because James’ investigation is civil, she cannot file criminal charges. But she could sue Trump and his company to seek financial penalties, and could try to shut down certain aspects of Trump’s business in New York.
A spokesperson for James declined to comment beyond the filing.