The supplementary order is one of several made by Judge Arthur Engoron of the Manhattan High Court last month, requesting that the tax firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius hand over documents that James’s office requested as part of its investigation.
The Attorney General’s Office declined to comment. CNN reached out to the Trump Organization and Morgan, Lewis & Bockius for comment.
Engoron writes that he privately reviewed documents that Trump’s tax attorney Sheri Dillon is to hand over to Morgan Lewis & Bockius, saying that documents he determined were not privileged were transferred on February 4th.
“The court found that much of the communication that Morgan Lewis indicated as privileged was communication that addressed business tasks and decisions, and not the exchange of legal advice,” Engoron wrote in his order Friday.
The status of documents related to tax investigations investigated by a property was a point of contention in the case.
Amy Carlin, a lawyer for the Trump organization, argued last month that the company “has every expectation that the communication would be confidential” regarding discussions about a property in Westchester County where an engineer was involved.
The attorney general’s office argued that the documents were in part not privileged because the Trump organization waived “privilege” when it disclosed certain documents to the IRS to “benefit”, attorney Eric Haren said with the Attorney General’s office.
Haren said “literally everything but the final appraisal value” was not disclosed to his office.
James’s office has been investigating Trump and the Trump organization since 2019, when Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen testified before Congress that the former president’s annual financial statements inflated the value of his assets to ensure favorable loans and insurance coverage, but the value deflated from other assets to reduce property taxes.
CNN’s Caroline Kelly contributed to this report.