Trump's legal team filed a letter with the New York Supreme Court alleging that Attorney General Letitia James has refused to disclose whether her office preserved communications with its own star witness, a witness who now says he was coerced.
The filing, submitted Thursday, centers on a court order that required James to detail "the preservation practices" and "preservation efforts" her office used to safeguard evidence in the sprawling civil fraud case against Donald Trump. Trump's attorneys argue James never actually complied. Instead, they say, her office offered boilerplate language about internal procedures and sidestepped the substance of what the court demanded.
At the heart of the dispute is Michael Cohen, Trump's former personal attorney, a central figure in James's 2022 lawsuit, and now, by his own account, a man who felt strong-armed into shaping his testimony to fit the prosecution's goals. Cohen published a Substack article on January 16, 2026, in which he said he had "felt pressured and coerced to only provide information and testimony that would satisfy the government's desire to build the cases against and secure a judgement and convictions against President Trump." Trump's lawyers cited that article directly in their court filing.
The legal back-and-forth is sharp. Trump's attorneys contend that James's office has not confirmed whether the communications with Cohen even exist, let alone whether they have been preserved. Fox News Digital reported that the filing accuses the attorney general's office of a deliberate dodge.
Trump's attorneys wrote in the filing:
"[New York Attorney General's Office] also carefully avoids representing one way or the other whether any requested materials in fact exist, and, if they do, whether NYAG has confirmed that they are being preserved."
They added:
"Instead of actually complying with the Order, NYAG has simply recited in general terms that her 'standard litigation hold procedures' have been in place since the investigation phase of this matter."
James's office pushed back. In a letter provided to Fox News Digital, the attorney general's team objected to what it called "extrajudicial discovery" and maintained it had fully met its obligations under the court's order.
Her office stated:
"Moreover, OAG has completely satisfied its obligations under the Court's Order for OAG to identify the preservation practices that existed and applied and continue to exist and apply."
That framing, "we followed our standard procedures", is precisely what Trump's attorneys call insufficient. The judge had denied broader discovery requests but did require James to lay out her office's specific preservation process. Trump's team says she answered a different, easier question.
Cohen was not a minor player in this case. He helped build the core of James's argument that Trump had routinely misrepresented the value of his properties. Cohen testified that Trump had given him target net-worth numbers to meet. His cooperation was central to the attorney general's theory of fraud.
Now Cohen himself says he was pressured. If his Substack account is accurate, and Trump's lawyers are asking the court to find out, it raises a direct question about the integrity of the evidence that produced the original judgment. A star witness who claims coercion is not a minor procedural footnote. It goes to the foundation of the case.
James brought the civil suit in 2022, accusing Trump of habitually inflating the value of his property to a fraudulent extent. The trial court found Trump liable and ordered him to pay $355 million plus interest in disgorgement. He was also banned from applying for loans from any New York bank or financial institution for three years and from serving as an officer or director of any New York company for two years.
An appeals court later vacated the monetary penalties. James has appealed to reinstate them.
The preservation fight is running alongside a broader appeal. Earlier this month, Trump's attorneys filed a separate brief citing five key weaknesses they say disqualify the case from proceeding at all.
First, they argue James lacked the authority to bring the suit. The case involves private commercial transactions, not harm to the general public. Second, they contend Trump's property valuations reflected subjective real estate estimates that lenders independently evaluated, not fraudulent misrepresentations. Third, they challenge the premise that real estate has one objective value, calling the overvaluation theory misguided on its face.
Fourth, they argue the $450 million disgorgement figure is excessive, unlawful, and unconstitutional. Fifth, they say the politically charged nature of the prosecution alone should have been enough to halt the case.
Trump's attorneys framed the alleged victims this way in the appeal:
"The only supposed 'victims' here are a handful of ultrasophisticated banks and insurers that have never claimed to be injured, were eager to do business with President Trump and his family, and made over $100 million from these transactions."
They also challenged the legal theory underpinning the entire suit. Section 63(12) of New York state law, the statute James used to bring the case, has never been applied to a comparable situation, according to the filing.
Trump's lawyers wrote:
"Under that breathtakingly broad theory, NYAG can second-guess any business transaction in this State on almost any imagined grounds."
And:
"NYAG cannot point to a single Section 63(12) enforcement action against similarly situated developers (or any other type of defendant) based on practices comparable to those alleged here."
The New York Supreme Court has not yet ruled on Trump's latest filing. Several critical questions remain unanswered. James's office has neither confirmed nor denied whether communications with Cohen exist. The court has not indicated whether it views her response as adequate compliance. And the status of both James's appeal to reinstate the monetary penalties and Trump's bid to throw out the case entirely remains unresolved.
The pattern here is worth noting plainly. James built a historic fraud case around a witness who now says he was coerced. Her office was ordered to show how it preserved evidence, and responded with general boilerplate. When pressed for specifics, she objected to the question itself. Trump's attorneys are not asking for extraordinary relief. They are asking a straightforward question: does the evidence exist, and is it being preserved?
An attorney general who spent years demanding transparency from Donald Trump ought to be able to answer that without a fight.
