Former President Donald Trump arrives at a Lower Manhattan courthouse to testify in the civil case against him in which he and his company are accused of falsely inflating his company’s assets to obtain more favorable loans and insurance policies. .
Trump arrived at the building shortly before 9:30 this Monday.
As usual, Trump took advantage of the press meeting in the hallways to attack the case on Monday, before the trial began. He attacked James as “racist” and called the case a “very sad situation for our country” and “very unfair.”
The testimony gives him the opportunity to try to use the stand as a campaign platform, but its format under oath, before a judge who has already fined him for inflammatory comments outside of court, also invites clear danger for a businessman and candidate famous for a casual rhetorical style.
It all makes for a spectacle in which a former president and leading Republican presidential candidate defends himself against accusations that he dramatically inflated his net worth.
Before finishing, he called his critics bullies.
His turn on the witness stand, in a case that cuts to the heart of the business brand he spent decades creating, marks a remarkable convergence of his legal troubles and his political adventures.
The judge ultimately ruled in favor of Roosevelt after a five-week trial, in which the former president spent eight days on the stand.
“They were five weeks of great tension,” he wrote in a letter to his son. “But the result was a great triumph, and I am sure that there will be no more libel trials as far as I am concerned, and for the moment at least no further active participation in politics for me.”
The former president’s sons, Eric and Donald Trump Jr., testified last week.
Eric said he completely trusted accountants and lawyers to ensure the accuracy of the company’s financial documents.
For his part, Donald Junior testified that he did not remember ever working on any of the financial statements and that he had “no specific knowledge” of them.
Trump walked slowly to the witness stand, tugging at his suit as he prepared for hours of questioning in a lawsuit by the New York state attorney general that accuses him and his company of inflating the value of his properties and deceiving banks and insurers in the search for business and loans.
Within minutes, he was asked about the financial documents at the heart of the case: his annual “statements of financial position.” They were delivered to banks, lenders and other entities to guarantee financing and business. According to the prosecution, they were fraudulent and highly inflated.
As he has done in preparations to testify, Trump downplayed the remarks, pointing to a disclaimer that he said amounted to telling recipients to do their own calculations.
“The banks didn’t consider them very relevant, and they had a disclaimer clause, which you could call a worthless declaration clause,” he said, insisting that, after decades in real estate, “I probably know the banks better than anyone.” … I know what they look at. They look at the deal, they look at the location.”
Although Trump initially responded to the questions naturally, his tensions with state Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engeron – who last month fined him $10,000 for violating a gag order – were evident.
Trump complained to the court that his 2014 financial statements should not be the subject of the lawsuit.
Meanwhile, Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, will take the court stand on Wednesday.
He was scheduled to do so last Friday for half a day but his lawyers argued that his testimony would likely require a full day.
