Exclusive: Westchester DA shuts down criminal investigation of Trump Organization without any charges

• Westchester's district attorney shut down its criminal investigation into the Trump Organization this month.
• The DA opted not to bring any charges against the company or Donald Trump personally.
• Prosecutors examined tax records, also a subject of Manhattan DA and NY attorney general investigations.

In a rare bit of good legal news for Donald Trump, the Westchester County district attorney's office has ended a criminal investigation into the Trump Organization without bringing any charges, a person familiar with the investigation told Insider.

District Attorney Mimi Rocah closed the investigation earlier in June, the person said.

Elliott Jacobson, a special prosecutor hired by Rocah, departed the office in late 2022. He found that the evidence collected in the investigation couldn't support criminal charges, regarded conduct outside the statute of limitations, or overlapped with investigations underway by other law enforcement officials, according to the source, whose identity is known to Insider but who was not authorized to speak on the record.

The district attorney's office in Westchester — a county north of New York City — opened the investigation two years ago. It examined whether the former president's family business illegally misled authorities about the value of the Trump National Golf Club Westchester to pay lower property taxes. For years leading up to the criminal investigation, the village of Ossining had been entangled in civil litigation with the club over the property's true value and appropriate tax bill, court records reviewed by Insider show.

In 2021, the office subpoenaed financial records from the golf course, according to the New York Times. In the years since, public information about the investigation has been scarce. According to the person familiar with the case, the investigation's scope eventually expanded into Donald Trump's personal conduct in determining the golf club's valuation.

Rocah's office butted against other investigations into the Trump Organization. The Manhattan district attorney's office had been looking at the company's finances for even longer, even going to the Supreme Court twice to obtain tax records.

Manhattan prosecutors brought criminal charges against the company and then-CFO Allen Weisselberg in the summer of 2021, alleging they falsified tax payroll tax records, and won at trial last fall.

In April, the district attorney brought another set of charges against Trump himself, alleging he broke the law by disguising hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels. Trump has pleaded not guilty to the case, which is scheduled to go to trial next March.

Alan Futerfas, an attorney representing the Trump Organization, declined to comment on the closure of the Westchester County investigation.

The Westchester property is the subject of the New York attorney general's civil lawsuit

In September, the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James brought a sprawling, 222-page lawsuit against Trump, the Trump Organization, and his three eldest children, alleging they broke tax, bank, and insurance laws by illegally manipulating property values.

Trump's golf course was singled out in the lawsuit as one property that allegedly fudged its numbers with "deceptive strategies."

"At Mr. Trump's golf course in Westchester, the valuation for 2011 assumed new members would pay an initiation fee of nearly $200,000 for each of the 67 unsold memberships, even though many new members in that year paid no initiation fee at all," the lawsuit alleged. "In some instances, Mr. Trump specifically directed club employees to reduce or eliminate the initiation fees to boost membership numbers."

The inflated valuations helped bring up Trump's net worth, which allowed him to obtain more favorable insurance and bank loan rates, the attorney general's lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit also claims the Trump Organization misrepresented the property value of its 212-acre Seven Springs estate, also in Westchester County. The case is scheduled for an October trial.

Because the Manhattan district attorney and New York attorney general offices were investigating the Trump Organization, the Westchester County prosecutors had a difficult time obtaining records for their own investigation and had to be concerned about the possibility of bringing duplicative legal claims, according to the source familiar with the case.

In the spring, Westchester County prosecutors visited the office of the state attorney general — which doesn't have the power to bring criminal cases — to review documents it obtained, the source said. It subsequently closed the investigation after deciding new criminal charges were not warranted.

While the closure of the Westchester case means Trump has one less legal threat to worry about, there are many others on the horizon as he campaigns for the 2024 presidential election.

On Tuesday, the former president was arraigned in Miami federal court on a 37-count indictment. Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith alleged Trump took documents containing government secrets with him to Mar-a-Lago following his presidency and attempted to obstruct their return to federal agencies. He pleaded not guilty.

Trump also faces the possibility of another indictment from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who's investigating whether he broke state laws by trying to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, which he lost.  Smith is also overseeing a separate investigation into a plot to send false electors to Congress on January 6, 2021, to stop the certification of now-President Joe Biden's electoral victory over Trump. On top of all that, Trump faces an array of civil lawsuits pending against him.

He may also soon have to deal with other consequences in Westchester. In March, state lawmakers proposed a bill to rename Donald J. Trump State Park, which is partially located in the county. Trump donated the undeveloped 436-acre property to the state in 2006 following unsuccessful attempts to build a golf course there.