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For Immediate Release
July, 18 2019, 12:00am EDT
Contact:
Government Watchdogs Call on the New York Attorney General to Dissolve Trump's Company and Revoke Its Corporate Charter
New York, NY
Free Speech For People (FSFP), a non-partisan legal advocacy organization, delivered today a letter to New York Attorney General Letitia James, calling for an investigation into whether to revoke the corporate charter of the Trump Organization under a New York law that authorizes her to dissolve a corporation for persistently illegal conduct or abuse of its powers. These alleged activities, detailed in the letter and in previous correspondence, include money laundering, tax evasion, fraud, facilitating unconstitutional foreign government payments (emoluments) to the president, helping Iran's Revolutionary Guard evade international sanctions, and concealing a political slush fund by invoicing bogus "legal services."
"For too long, the Trump Organization has acted as if following the law is only for suckers. The Trump Organization's corruption and impunity need to end now. The New York attorney general should use her legal authority to file a lawsuit to dissolve the company and revoke its corporate charter," said Ron Fein, Legal Director for Free Speech For People.
"The Trump Organization has served as Donald Trump's criminal enterprise for decades and in the last several years has been used by Trump to help illegally secure the presidency through an unlawful campaign finance hush money scheme, and to turn the presidency into a profiteering venture for Trump and his family through a continuous course of corrupt dealings and violations of the constitutional emoluments clauses. The use of the Trump Organization to facilitate this criminality and corruption is contrary to New York law and it is incumbent on the Attorney General to investigate and take appropriate action," said Ben Clements, Free Speech For People Board Chair, partner in the Boston law firm of Clements & Pineault, former federal prosecutor, and former Chief Legal Counsel to Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick.
"The integrity of our democracy and public institutions are at risk," said Jonathan Abady, co-counsel on Free Speech For People's letters issued today and a founding partner of Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady. "The overwhelming evidence of criminal conduct involving the Trump Organization demands an immediate and thorough investigation by the New York attorney general."
"The New York Business Corporation Law is quite clear," said Jennifer Taub, Professor of Law at Vermont Law School, Board Member of Free Speech For People, and co-counsel on the letter to the New York attorney general. "The attorney general can dissolve any New York corporation that conducts its business in a persistently fraudulent or illegal manner. A corporate charter is a right, not a privilege. It's time to explore dissolution."
"New York gives its Attorney General special powers for cases of rampant corporate fraud. Those powers go back centuries in England, and New York attorneys general have used them recently. They are especially appropriate for this case. We have more and more evidence that the Trump Organization is built on a foundation of fraud. The question is just how far that fraud goes, and we need the New York Attorney General to help the public find out through civil investigation," said Jed Shugerman, Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law and co-counsel on the letter.
"The Trump Organization must be held accountable for its repeated violations of the law. The evidence is overwhelming that this corporation is acting as a criminal enterprise. And, the time is now for the New York Attorney General to open an investigation into whether to revoke the Trump Organization's corporate charter," said John Bonifaz, the Co-Founder and President of Free Speech For People.
Free Speech For People sent previous letters to Acting Attoney General of New York Barbara Underwood, and former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, detailing the long history of alleged illegal conduct by the Trump Organization, both before and after President Trump's inauguration. This new letter provides new updated information for that investigation. (As a New York state court held in a previous case, violations of federal law can be grounds for corporate charter revocation because "[f]ederal law is as much a law of [New York] State as any specific law enacted by the State Legislature.").
The letter is publicly available on Free Speech For People's website. It is signed by Ron Fein, John Bonifaz, and Ben Clements of Free Speech For People; Jonathan Abady and Andrew Celli, Jr. of Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady LLP; Jed Shugerman, Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law; and Jennifer Taub, Professor Law at Vermont Law School.
Free Speech For People is encouraging members of the public to sign a petition urging the Attorney General to pursue this investigation, and to contact her office to voice support.
Free Speech For People is a national non-partisan non-profit organization founded on the day of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. FEC that works to defend our democracy and our Constitution.
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'This Crisis is Expanding': Trump's Iran War Escalates as Houthis Launch Missile at Israel
"You thought it was bad when Iran throttled the Strait of Hormuz?... The Houthis have already proven they can keep the Red Sea closed despite a year of US Navy skirmishing," said one journalist.
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The Houthis on Saturday took credit for launching a ballistic missile at Israel, opening a new front in the war US President Donald Trump illegally started with Iran nearly one month ago.
As reported by Axios, the attack by the Houthis signals that the Yemen-based militia is joining the conflict to aide Iran, which has been under aerial assault from the US and Israel for the past four weeks.
Although the Houthi missile was intercepted by Israeli defenses, it is likely just the opening salvo in an expanding conflict throughout the Middle East.
Axios noted that while the Houthis entered the war by launching an attack on Israel, they could inflict the most damage on the US and its allies in the region by shutting down the strait of Bab al-Mandeb in the Red Sea.
"Doing that," Axios explained, "would dramatically increase the global economic crisis that has been created due to the war with Iran" and its closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which has sent global energy prices skyrocketing.
Sky News international correspondent John Sparks reported on Saturday that the Houthis' entrance into the war shows that "this crisis is expanding, it is escalating."
'This crisis is expanding and escalating.'
Houthi rebels in Yemen have confirmed they launched a missile at Israel, marking the Iran-backed group's first involvement in the war.
@sparkomat reports live from Jerusalem
https://t.co/Leuc4SnGfG
📺 Sky 501 and YouTube pic.twitter.com/TmlyFHkCZN
— Sky News (@SkyNews) March 28, 2026
Sparks argued that the Houthis' decision to fire a missile at Israel signals that "the geographical spread of this conflict is expanding," adding that "the Houthis have shown the ability to attack shipping in the Red Sea and the waters around the Arabian Peninsula."
Sparks said that even though Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio "have been projecting confidence" about having the war under control, "it's not playing out that way... on the ground."
Danny Citrinowicz, senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, argued that the Houthis' main value to Iran isn't launching strikes on Israel, but their ability to increase economic pressure on the US.
Citrinowicz also outlined ways the Houthis could further drive up the global price of energy.
"This raises a key question: whether the Houthis will escalate further by targeting Saudi infrastructure and shipping lanes more directly, or whether they will preserve this capability as an additional lever of pressure as the conflict evolves," he wrote. "With each passing day of the conflict, particularly in light of its expanding scope against Iran, the likelihood of this scenario materializing continues to grow. It is increasingly not a question of if, but when."
Journalist Spencer Ackerman similarly pointed to the Houthis' ability to cause economic havoc as the biggest concern about their entrance into the conflict.
"You thought it was bad when Iran throttled the Strait of Hormuz?" he asked rhetorically. "The Houthis have already proven they can keep the Red Sea closed despite a year of US Navy skirmishing."
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Soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces on Friday were caught on camera assaulting and detaining a crew of CNN journalists while they were reporting from the occupied West Bank.
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The crew are then accosted by armed members of the IDF, who order them to sit down. After the crew complies with their commands, the soldiers come to seize the journalists' cameras and phones that are being used to record the incident.
A soldier then puts CNN photojournalist Cyril Theophilos in a chokehold and forces him to the ground. Writing about the assault later, Theophilos said that the soldier "pushed and strangled me," adding that this kind of violence "is just a symptom of the IDF's actions in the West Bank."
According to Diamond, the CNN crew were subsequently detained for two hours. During that time, Diamond wrote, it became clear that the ideology of the Israeli settlers movement was "motivating many of the soldiers who operate in the occupied West Bank" and that the Israeli military regularly acts "in service of the settler movement."
For instance, one IDF soldier acknowledged during conversations with the CNN crew that the settler outpost near Tayasir was unlawful under both international and Israeli law, but insisted "this will be a legal settlement... slowly, slowly."
The soldier also said he wanted to exact "revenge" on local Palestinians for the death of 18-year-old Israeli settler Yehuda Sherman, who was killed last week by a Palestinian driver. Palestinians who witnessed Sherman's killing have said that the driver was trying to stop Sherman from stealing sheep.
The IDF issued an apology to CNN over the incident, insisting that "the actions and behavior of the soldiers in the incident are incompatible with what is expected of IDF soldiers."
However, this apology was deemed insufficient by Barak Ravid, global affairs correspondent for Axios.
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The soldiers' actions also drew condemnation from Haaretz reporter Bar Peleg, who argued that problems in the IDF have only grown worse under the far-right government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
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In what's being called an "exceedingly rare" move, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is blocking the promotion of two Black and two female colonels to one-star generals,
The New York Times reported Friday that some senior US military officials are questioning whether Hegseth acted out of animus toward Black people and women after the defense secretary blocked the promotion of the four officers despite the repeated objections of Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll, who touted what the Times called the colonels' "decadeslong records of exemplary service."
Military officials told the Times that Hegseth's chief of staff, Lt. Col. Ricky Buria, got into a heated exchange with Driscoll last summer over the promotion of another officer, Maj. Gen. Antoinette Gant—a combat veteran of the US invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq—to command the Military District of Washington, DC.
Such a promotion would have placed Gant in charge of numerous events at which she would likely be seen publicly with President Donald Trump. According to multiple military officials, Buria told Driscoll that Trump would not want to stand next to a Black female officer.
Pete Hegseth looked at a list of qualified officers and decided Black leaders and women had to go.That’s not leadership. It’s discrimination in plain sight.And every Republican who stays silent is complicit.
[image or embed]
— Rep. Norma Torres (@normajtorres.bsky.social) March 27, 2026 at 10:10 AM
A shocked Driscoll reportedly replied that "the president is not racist or sexist," an assessment that flies in the face of countless racist and sexist statements by the president, both before and during both of his White House terms.
Buria called the officials' account of his exchange with Driscoll "completely false."
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt declined to discuss the matter beyond saying that Hegseth is “doing a tremendous job restoring meritocracy throughout the ranks at the Pentagon, as President Trump directed him to do.”
Military officials told the Times that one of the Black colonels whose promotion was blocked by Hegseth wrote a paper nearly 15 years ago historically analyzing differences between Black and white soldiers' roles in the Army. One of the female colonels, a logistics officer, was held back because she was deployed in Afghanistan during the US withdrawal whose foundation was laid by Trump during his first term. It is unclear why the two other colonels were denied promotions.
Although more than 40% of current active duty US troops are people of color, military leadership remains overwhelmingly comprised of white men. Hegseth, who declared a "frontal assault" on the "whores to wokesters" who he said rose up through the ranks during the Biden administration, told an audience during a 250th anniversary ceremony for the US Navy that "your diversity is not your strength."
Hegseth has argued that women should not serve in combat roles, although he later walked back his assertion amid pushback from senators during his confirmation process. Still, since Trump returned to office, every service branch chief and 9 of the military’s 10 combat commanders are white men.
Leaders of the Democratic Women's Caucus and Congressional Black Caucus issued a joint statement Friday calling Hegseth's blocking of the four colonels' promotions "outrageous and wrong."
"The claim that Hegseth’s chief of staff told the army secretary Trump would not want to stand next to a Black female officer at military events is racist, sexist, and extremely concerning," wrote the lawmakers, Reps. Yvette Clarke (NY), Teresa Leger Fernández (NM), Emilia Sykes (Ohio), Hillary Scholten (Mich.), and Chrissy Houlahan (Pa.).
"Time and time again, Trump and his administration have shown us exactly who they are—attacking and undermining Black people and women in the military, public servants, and women in power," the congressional leaders asserted. "It is clear they are trying to erase Black and women’s leadership and history."
"Today’s news isn’t an anomaly, it is a part of a coordinated and sustained strategy to undermine and erase women and people of color," their statement said.
"We've long known that Pete Hegseth is an unfit and unqualified secretary of defense appointed by Trump," the lawmakers added. "So it is absurd, ironic, and beyond inappropriate that he of all people would deny these promotions to officers with records of exemplary service. America's servicemembers deserve so much better.”
Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, also issued a statement reading, "If these reports are accurate, Secretary Hegseth's decision to remove four decorated officers from a promotion list after having been selected by their peers for their merit and performance is not only outrageous, it would be illegal."
"Denying the promotions of individual officers based on their race or gender would betray every principle of merit-based service military officers uphold throughout their careers," Reed added.
Several congressional colleagues weighed in, like Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), a decorated combat veteran who lost her legs when an Iraqi defending his homeland from US invasion shot down the Blackhawk helicopter she was piloting. Duckworth said on Bluesky: "He says he wants to bring meritocracy back to our military. He says he has our warfighters' backs. But here he is, the most unqualified SecDef in history, denying troops a promotion that their fellow warfighters decided they've earned. Hegseth is a disgrace to our heroes."
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