Donald J. Trump was released from a judicial order holding him in contempt of court on Wednesday, ending an embarrassing two-week period for the former president, whose business practices are under civil investigation by the New York state attorney general.
A New York State judge, Arthur F. Engoron, held Mr. Trump in contempt late last month after finding that he had failed to comply with the terms of a December subpoena sent by the attorney general, Letitia James, requesting documents from his personal files. The judge ordered Mr. Trump to pay $10,000 a day until he complied, leading to a $110,000 penalty.
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.
Ms. James, a Democrat, said in a court filing earlier this year that the Trump Organization had engaged in “fraudulent or misleading” business practices.
But she argued then that she needed to obtain additional records and testimony, including the documents sought from Mr. Trump’s personal files, before taking any legal action.
Because Ms. James’s investigation is civil, she cannot file criminal charges but she can file a lawsuit. In the contempt hearing last month, a lawyer from her office, Kevin Wallace, indicated that a suit could come soon, saying that the office was preparing to file an action against Mr. Trump in the near future.
In a statement, Ms. James celebrated the order for the fine to be paid, and said her office would “continue to enforce the law and seek answers as part of this investigation.”
Ms. James’s inquiry is focused on whether Mr. Trump’s annual financial statements falsely inflated the value of his real estate properties and other assets so that he could secure favorable loans and financial benefits.
That area of focus overlaps with a separate criminal investigation being conducted by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which had been moving toward an indictment of Mr. Trump early this year before prosecutors developed concerns about proving the case.
Mr. Trump has denied wrongdoing and called Ms. James a “Radical Left Racist.”
While lawyers for the former president said that they had conducted a thorough search for the records being sought by Ms. James’s investigators, Justice Engoron said in April that the lawyers had not provided enough detail in official legal documentation about how and when those searches were conducted and who conducted them, and he moved to hold Mr. Trump in contempt.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers have appealed the contempt order and that appeal will continue, they signaled Wednesday. While Mr. Trump must pay the $110,000, the money might be held in escrow for now, meaning that Ms. James’s office might not receive it until after the appeal is decided.
The $110,000 sum, while little more than a rounding error for someone of Mr. Trump’s wealth, underscores the severity of the contempt. Mr. Trump is loath to part with his money, and his lawyers argued aggressively to drop the financial component of the contempt order.
“It’s a lot of money,” Alina Habba, one of his lawyers, remarked at the hearing on Wednesday.
Along with paying the fine, Mr. Trump’s lawyers must file a number of new documents attesting to the specifics of the search and the company’s policy for storing his records.
Separately, the outside company reviewing Mr. Trump’s records, HaystackID, must complete its review of the documents. Mr. Trump’s lawyers said that about five boxes remain unsearched.
In addition to demanding records from Mr. Trump, Ms. James has also sought to question the former president and two of his adult children, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, under oath. (Her office interviewed another son, Eric Trump, in October 2020.)
Justice Engoron ordered that the Trumps sit for questioning, but they appealed that order.
Later on Wednesday, a lawyer representing the family argued the issue in front of an appellate court, along with lawyers from Ms. James’s office.
The Trumps’ lawyer, Alan S. Futerfas, faced fierce questioning from a panel of judges who appeared skeptical of the former president’s effort to avoid testifying under oath.
If Mr. Trump and his children are ordered to testify, they could invoke their constitutional right not to incriminate themselves, in order to avoid bolstering the Manhattan district attorney’s criminal investigation. Lawyers from Ms. James’s office are participating in that investigation.
The presiding justice, Rolando T. Acosta, suggested that exercising that right could be “the only remedy” available to the Trumps.
“You want us to somehow use the dual civil and criminal investigation to engage in some curtailment of power of the attorney general’s office,” he said. “We’re not empowered to do that.”
