A judge in New York has released former President Donald Trump from a contempt of court ruling relating to a case being investigated by the attorney general of New York into Trump’s business dealings, The New York Times reports.
The contempt order stems from an order for Trump to hand over records related to his businesses and the judge finding he failed to do so.
Trump has argued that they searched for all of the pertinent files and did their due dilligence.
Trump still must pay the $110,000 in fines that accumulated during his contempt of court.
Per the New York Times:
On Wednesday, Justice Engoron withdrew the contempt order, but set a few conditions, including requiring Mr. Trump to pay the fine. The judge ruled that if Mr. Trump and his company did not meet the conditions by May 20, he would reinstate the contempt order and retroactively apply the $10,000-a-day fine.
In an effort to cooperate with the judge’s original contempt order, lawyers for Mr. Trump filed a number of recent court documents attesting to a thorough search of his records. An outside company also assured the judge that it had reviewed a vast number of files — more than 1,300 boxes — including Mr. Trump’s hard-copy calendars, records in file cabinets at the Trump Organization’s offices in Midtown Manhattan and boxes of documents at off-site storage facilities.
The sweeping search for evidence in Mr. Trump’s records did not appear to turn up much information. Mr. Trump’s lawyers asserted that they did not locate any new records responsive to the subpoena from Ms. James.
Still, the battle over the records — and the contempt order against Mr. Trump — set the stage for Ms. James to potentially take legal action against the former president.
Letitia James, the Attorney General, has written in court filings that Trump had engaged in “fraudulent or misleading” business practices.
