New York Attorney General Letitia James is accusing former President Donald Trump, his family members, the Trump Organization and other affiliates of fraudulently overvaluing properties and lying to lenders and insurers for more than a decade.

The civil lawsuit was filed Wednesday in the New York Supreme Court and seeks damages of $250 million. The 220-page lawsuit details allegations that the Trump Organization inflated values on properties it owns around the country ranging from the Trump Building in New York City to golf resorts such as Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, which is Trump’s permanent residence. In all, the lawsuit said, 11 of the company’s annual financial statements between 2011 and 2021 included more than 200 misleading and false valuations of assets.

Trump fired back Wednesday on the social media platform he created called Truth Social, calling James’ investigation a “witch hunt,” adding that she is “spending all of her time fighting for very powerful and well represented banks and insurance companies, who were fully paid, made a lot of money, and never had a complaint about me, instead of fighting murder and violent crime, which is killing New York state.”

Through the lawsuit, James, who is running for reelection this year, seeks to have all officers of the Trump Organization, which is based in New York City at 725 Fifth Ave., removed and barred from holding such positions at any company in New York for five years. Three of Trump's children are listed as defendants in the lawsuit along with Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer, who pleaded guilty last month to tax fraud and will serve five months in state prison.

James focused on the former president during a press conference Wednesday announcing the lawsuit, and his name appears frequently throughout the document. “The complaint demonstrates that Donald Trump falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to unjustly enrich himself and cheat the system, thereby cheating all of us,” James said at the press conference.

The lawsuit comes weeks after the former president invoked the Fifth Amendment repeatedly on questions from the attorney general’s office during a deposition and after roughly three years of investigating whether the Trump Organization had improperly inflated the values of properties.

Alina Habba, managing partner of law firm Habba Madaio & Associates LLP, who represents Trump, issued a statement Wednesday saying the lawsuit is solely focused on advancing the attorney general’s political agenda.

“It is abundantly clear that the Attorney General’s Office has exceeded its statutory authority by prying into transactions where absolutely no wrongdoing has taken place,” Habba said. “We are confident that our judicial system will not stand for this unchecked abuse of authority, and we look forward to defending our client against each and every one of the Attorney General’s meritless claims.”

Representatives for the Trump Organization did not immediately respond to a request from CoStar News to comment.

Trump's financial statements were allegedly used to obtain better rates and higher limits from insurance companies based on valuations the lawsuit said were overstated.

In one scenario, the lawsuit alleged Trump inflated the value of 40 Wall St., a 72-story office tower in New York City built in 1930, after a loan modification by lender Capital One in 2010. According to the lawsuit, the lender had been concerned about the property’s cash flow since late summer 2009. Representatives for Capital One did not immediately respond to a request to comment.

The concern prompted meetings with Trump and Weisselberg. During one of those, Trump said that “if the bank tried to restructure the loan because of a low loan-to-value based on a bank appraisal, he would counter a low appraisal by creating a Trump University lease for the vacant space and then order his own appraisal,” the lawsuit said.

His goal, according to the lawsuit, was to increase the value to force another appraisal or arbitration or litigation. Once the loan modification occurred in 2010, the Trump Organization attached budget documents that showed the building's net operating income of roughly $4.4 million. But the next year, the company listed net operating income of $26.2 million, which is “nearly six times the budget projection — to derive a grossly inflated value for the property of $524.7 million,” the lawsuit said.

According to the lawsuit, outside appraisals show that Trump’s valuation was “false and misleading.”

Chicago-based Cushman & Wakefield did an appraisal for the lender in 2010 that put the building’s value at $200 million, followed by appraisals in 2011 and 2012 in the same vicinity, according to the lawsuit. The national real estate brokerage ended up in James’ crosshairs in July when she sought to hold Cushman in contempt of court for missing a June 27 deadline to hand over documents related to the Trump Organization. A deal was later worked out on obtaining the documents.

The lawsuit said Trump didn’t include an increase in the building’s valuation between 2011 and 2015 for a ground lease that raised the company's rental expenses from $2.8 million to $15.5 million beginning on Jan. 1, 2033. But Cushman’s appraisals factored in the ground lease.

“Cushman & Wakefield remains steadfast in its support of our company’s appraisers and their appraisals and we will continue to work in good faith with the Office of the Attorney General," a spokesman for Cushman said in an email.

In addition to the 2011 valuation the lawsuit claimed is inflated, the Trump Organization listed the building’s value at $527.2 million in 2012 and $530.7 million in 2013 on financial statements.

The lawsuit said valuations on other properties followed a similar course. With Mar-a-Lago, the Trump Organization placed its value at $739 million “based on the false premise that it was unrestricted property and could be developed and sold for residential use even though Mr. Trump himself signed deeds donating his residential development rights and sharply restricting changes to the property,” according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit said the property should be valued closer to $75 million based on annual revenue of less than $25 million.