As the New York attorney general investigates the Trump Organization for cooking up fake property values on official documents, lawyers revealed Monday that one of the world’s largest commercial real estate companies is also under investigation for its role in the scheme: Cushman & Wakefield.
On Monday, attorneys with the office of AG Letitia James said the real estate firm is now a central player in its expanding probe into alleged bank fraud by the Trump family corporation.
“They’re right in the middle of this,” assistant attorney general Austin Thompson said in court, noting what investigators found as the firm’s key role in the Trump company’s “decade-long history of making false statements about its properties.”
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Cushman & Wakefield, which is based in Chicago but operates worldwide, provided advisers who helped former President Donald Trump’s company assess the value of its properties in California and New York. The company suddenly cut its ties to the Trump Organization in the days after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
The AG’s office has now taken the position that the company’s decision to distance itself from Trump is itself a suspicious move akin to the recent decision by global accounting firm Mazars USA to dump Trump—and disavow their work for him.
“We think that the noisy exit from Cushman and Wakefield… is another red flag. And we would like to learn more about it,” Thompson said.
The real estate firm’s lawyer, Sawnie A. McEntire, painted a different picture. He said the company has played along with the AG’s years-long investigation, turning over documents after receiving four subpoenas and having half a dozen employees provide witness testimony to investigators.
“We have not ignored the attorney general’s subpoenas, and we’ve never held ourselves above the law,” McEntire said.
At issue now is whether the attorney general’s office can acquire even more evidence, especially now that its investigation seems to be heating up and nearing the point where the office can sue the Trump Organization and others for allegedly violating New York’s business laws.
“The evidence shows that Cushman was as wrapped up in misstatements by Donald J. Trump and the Trump Organization as almost any other entity,” Thompson told the judge on Monday.
The AG’s office has been quietly communicating with the real estate company since June 2019, according to a person familiar with their interactions. However, the law enforcement agency has ratcheted up the pressure on the firm in recent weeks.
On April 8, investigators asked a state court judge to intervene and force the company to turn over records that reflect how its employees have appraised properties other than Trump real estate. Attorneys at the AG’s office explained that they want to see how they compare in order to better assess how and why Cushman & Wakefield gave Trump such rosy appraisals.
But on Monday, Cushman & Wakefield’s legal team tried to portray this as an unwarranted and unfair deep dive into the company’s “intensely proprietary, private, confidential data.”
“The public interest has to be balanced with the invasion that will take place here, forcing my client to go through... thousands of its clients and thousands of appraisals,” said McEntire, a Texas lawyer.
Judge Arthur F. Engoron countered that this was not a regular lawsuit. “The attorney general is empowered to investigate how businesses operate in this state,” he said.
The judge ended the hearing by ordering Cushman & Wakefield to turn over the records sought by investigators, giving the company until May 27 to do so.
