We have written here for years about Andrew Ceresney's work as the Director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement. Ceresney joined the SEC in 2013, but he had a long legal career before that--including an interesting case now making headlines from his days in the private sector that involves the Republican Party Nominee for President, Donald Trump.

This week, after it was discovered the parts of Melania Trump's speech at the RNC convention were plagiarized from Michelle Obama's 2008 convention speech, a Trump employee named Meredith McIver stated that the borrowed passages were her mistake. According to The Washington Post, McIver was also the co-writer with Trump in 2004 on a book called, "How to Get Rich," and in 2007 Trump testified that McIver was to blame for factual errors in the book concerning how deeply in debt he had fallen before making a major financial comeback.

The Post reports that Trump's testimony concerning McIver's prior errors came in a 2007 deposition of Trump conducted by Ceresney. At the time, Ceresney was a partner at the law firm Debevoise & Plimpton in New York and was defending a New York Times reporter named Timothy L. O'Brien. In a book called “TrumpNation: The Art of Being The Donald,” O'Brien wrote that Trump was actually worth much less than he claimed, leading Trump to sue O'Brien for $5 billion in damages.

According to the Post article, Ceresney asked Trump about his book's claim that he was at one point $9.2 billion in debt, exploring whether Trump had exaggerated the amount of debt he was in. Trump testified that the $9.2 billion figure was not accurate, and that he didn't know how it got in the book.

 

Ceresney then directed Trump to another of his books co-written with McIver (the 2006 book, "Trump 101: The Way to Success") that also contained a reference to the $9 billion debt figure. Trump reiterated that he "told [McIver] about it, and she obviously put it in again. She probably forgot.... I would love you to question her about it."

 

The Post reports that the court dismissed Trump's lawsuit against O'Brien in 2009 after "Trump spent five years and more than $1 million pursuing the case."

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