- Trump's business hired HaystackID to conduct an "independent" collection of records.
- HaystackID previously worked for House Republicans' campaign arm.
- New York investigators say the firm and the Trump Organization have been slow to turn over records.
Facing a court mandate to respond to subpoenas from the New York attorney general's office, Donald Trump's namesake company turned to an outside firm for help sifting through business records.
The so-called "e-discovery" firm, HaystackID, had previously worked with the Trump Organization, the former president's business empire. But HaystackID also has ties to politics — specifically, the Republican Party.
In 2019, the Washington, DC-based firm received nearly $65,000 from the National Republican Congressional Committee for "recount – legal consulting," according to a review of disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission.
More recently, HaystackID provided "software service" for pro-Trump US Rep. David Schweikert, an Arizona Republican whose campaign committee paid the firm more than $77,000 between 2019 and 2020, FEC disclosures show.
"HaystackID is one of the nation's leading eDiscovery firms. We take seriously our obligations to all our clients and have clients across a range of industries and spanning the political spectrum," Cari Brunelle, a spokesperson for HaystackID, told Insider. "We cannot comment on anything related to this matter, on which we serve as a court-appointed neutral and independent third party eDiscovery firm."
In December, New York Attorney General Letitia James approved the Trump Organization's selection of HaystackID to conduct an independent review. But she hasn't been impressed with the firm's performance of late.
James' office recently named HaystackID in court papers accusing the Trump Organization of slow-rolling in the company's response to her subpoenas. James' office issued the subpoenas as part of a three-year civil investigation — running parallel with a criminal investigation led by the Manhattan district attorney — into whether Trump and his company lied about the value of his assets when he applied for multi-million dollar loans and paid his real estate taxes.
In the court papers, the attorney general's office asked Manhattan-based Justice Arthur Engoron to set a conference this week and raised concerns that the Trump Organization would not turn over subpoenaed records before a critical deadline next month.
"The primary subpoenas at issue are more than two years old," wrote Austin Thompson, an assistant New York attorney general, in a letter to Engoron.
"There is no reason," Thompson added, "this entire process should not be completed by mid-April."
Repeatedly throughout the two years since she first subpoenaed the Trump Organization, James has bemoaned the Trump Organization's pace in handing over files.
Last year, she said the Trump Organization "failed to take reasonable steps to preserve electronic and hard copy documents relevant to the OAG's investigation" and that the company "produced almost no hard copy documents."
The company's apparent stinginess in turning over hard copy files was of particular concern given the former president's notorious aversion to using computers, email, and text messages, and his reported haphazardness in preserving important documents.
'Progress is opaque'
The more recent airing of concerns comes as the New York attorney's office closes in on the April 30 expiration of a so-called tolling agreement with the Trump Organization.
Under that agreement, the Trump Organization agreed to effectively freeze the state's statute of limitations as it might apply to any alleged misconduct, allowing the attorney general's office to investigate without having to rush to file charges.
In the court papers, the New York attorney general's office included email correspondence providing new insights into its back-and-forth with lawyers for the Trump Organization.
On March 9, for instance, Thompson wrote an email to a Trump Organization lawyer alleging that HaystackID's "progress is opaque to [the attorney general's office] because the Trump Organization has restricted Haystack's ability to report any substantive information."
And, Thompson added, the "progress which we can discern has been too slow."
At the time of the email, Thompson said HaystackID had only interviewed about half of the 81 "custodians" identified as having devices that needed to be searched. Thompson added that lawyers for the Trump Organization said the company would respond to the subpoenas by April 15 but "offered no firm date for completion."
A separate court filing from Lawrence Rosen, a lawyer representing the Trump Organization, names Donald Trump and his children as among the custodians. Other custodians include Matthew Calamari, the Trump Organization's chief operating officer, and Allen Weisselberg, the former chief financial officer who was indicted last year on tax fraud charges.
In a March 14 letter to Thompson, Rosen said the Trump Organization had turned over more than 800,000 documents, with more than 5.6 million pages of information.
"Nonetheless, the [attorney general's office] continues to complain that [the Trump Organization] must do more and faster," he wrote.
On Tuesday, another lawyer for the Trump Organization said it was "puzzling"that the attorney general was asking for the court "to micromanage the very tail-end" of the discovery process.
The lawyer, Amy Carlin of LaRocca Hornik Rosen & Greenberg LLP, said HaystackID was working "diligently" and that the Trump Organization had twice informed the New York attorney general's office that the subpoena responses would come by April 15 if not sooner.
There was "no dispute," she said, for the court to resolve.
Engoron has yet to decide whether to hold the requested conference.