“I will remind everyone that this investigation only began after Michael Cohen, the former attorney, his former attorney testified before Congress shed light on this misconduct,” he said. The question that sparked Mr. Cohen’s response came in 2019 from Ms. James’s New York colleague, Democratic Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. In 2019, Mr. Cohen testified against his first before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. At the time, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who the previous year had defeated former House Democratic Caucus Chairman Joe Crowley in a primary in New York’s 14th District, raised questions about whether Mr. Trump ever provided inflated assets to an insurance company. “Yes,” Mr. Cohen said in response. When Ms Ocasio-Cortez asked who else knew Mr Trump was doing this, she said: “Allen Weiselberg, Ron Lieberman and Matthew Calamari.” The lawsuit also names Mr. Lieberman, the former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization. Specifically, it said that Mr. Weisselberg helped Mr. Trump make fraudulent financial statements about his properties. “Mr. Trump made it known through Mr. Weiselberg that he wanted his net worth in his declarations to increase every year, and the declarations were the vehicle by which his net worth was fraudulently inflated by billions of dollars year after year,” it said. Ms. James’s office. in a statement. “And where is the committee going to find more information on that, do you think we need to look at his financial statements and his tax returns,” he said. “Yes, and you will find it in the Trump Org,” Mr. Cohen said. The lawsuit alleges that Mr. Trump fraudulently inflated his net worth by millions of dollars so that banks could lend him and his businesses money on more favorable terms that would otherwise not have been available.
