Former President Donald Trump swears he cannot find four personal and business cellphones that New York’s Attorney General has demanded for her probe of the Trump Organization, according to a new court filing.
“I am not aware of its current location,” and “I do not know its current whereabouts,” Trump says repeatedly of his most recent business phone, two old flip phones, plus a Samsung that he had used until “it was taken from me at some point while I was president,” according to the filing.
Trump also swears in the filing that he has no additional personal business documents to turn over to the AG’s probe — and that he does not own or use a business computer.
“I also do not use a computer for work-related purposes,” he says in the filing — a court-ordered affidavit he signed and dated on Friday, May 6.
The affidavit was included as part of a larger filing in New York Supreme Court that pushes back against a costly contempt-of-court order.
The former president has been fined $10,000 a day since April 26. That’s when a Manhattan judge, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, issued a written order holding Trump in contempt of court for failing to comply with AG Letitia James’ subpoenas for his business documents and records.
Trump currently owes James more than $100,000 in fines. He has begun appealing the contempt order, calling the accompanying fine “exorbitant” and unjustified.
Engoron had rejected a less-thorough affidavit submitted last week, in which Trump spent all of one page saying he’d looked for documents but came up empty-handed. The AG has complained that Trump and his business have in two years turned over only ten of the former president’s personal business documents.
Friday night’s four-page sworn statement attempts to address Engoron’s demand for a more thorough, so-called “Jackson affidavit,” detailing Trump’s search for any documents that would be responsive to James’ subpoena.
Trump was known during his presidency for keeping a cellphone always at the ready for the firing-off of incendiary tweets. But in his affidavit, Trump said he’s lost track of some of these old devices, including the very phones the AG believes could contain information pertinent to the inquiry.
Trump said he believes the Trump Organization last issued him a business cell phone in 2015, a year before his election. That one’s just disappeared, he said.
“I am no longer have the cell phone in my possession and I am not aware of its current location,” Trump said in his affidavit of a device that might have been of great interest to the AG’s probe.
