He can't help it. Donald Trump turned his financial fraud civil trial into a political platform again on Thursday, denouncing “election interference” four days before the Republican vote in Iowa, the starting point of his camp's primary in which he is the heavy favorite despite numerous legal uncertainties.
The former tenant of the White House (2017-2021), who dreams of returning there, is accused, along with his sons Eric and Donald Jr., of inflating the value of skyscrapers, luxury hotels or golf courses in the heart of their empire in the 2010s, the, to have increased colossally Trump Organization in order to obtain cheaper loans from banks and better insurance conditions.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, who filed a civil lawsuit alleging financial fraud in fall 2022, is seeking $370 million in damages, but the lawsuit also threatens to strip the Trump family of control of their real estate assets.
“Control your customer”
When 77-year-old Donald Trump returned to court for final arguments on Thursday, he once again railed against “political interference,” “electoral interference at the highest levels” and a “very unfair process” before the press.
The Republican Party primary favorite wanted to make his own plea, a request rejected by Judge Arthur Engoron, who feared “a campaign speech” in the courtroom. Finally, on Thursday, the judge authorized Donald Trump to develop some arguments, and the former president immediately seized the opportunity to attack Letitia James.
“They want to make sure I never win (the election) again. She (attorney general) hates Trump… and if I can't talk about it, it hurts me,” he said. The judge tried to interrupt him, but the former President of the United States replied: “You have your own agenda, you must not listen for more than a minute.” “Control your client,” the judge replied to Donald Trump's lawyers.
Error or fraud
Since the trial began on October 2, the billionaire tribune has railed against the judiciary and denounced a political “witch hunt” or a “process worthy of a banana republic” at every appearance in the courtroom or in the hallways of the Manhattan courthouse.
For three months, the Trump clan's lawyers considered the case to be legally baseless. One of them, Chris Kise, on Thursday acknowledged possible “inadvertent” errors in Mr. Trump’s financial returns without the need to “close fraud.” But for prosecutors, “the countless fraudulent schemes they used to inflate assets and conceal facts were so egregious that they cannot be declared innocent,” they wrote in a memo to the audience.
False bomb threat
In a sign of the tense atmosphere surrounding the trial, police in Nassau County on the Long Island peninsula east of New York confirmed that Judge Engoron's home had been the subject of an unfounded alarm threat about the bomb. Outside the courthouse, some protesters chanted “No dictator in the United States” under surveillance from a helicopter.
During the trial, Donald Trump violently attacked the judicial team and the attorney general, and the judge imposed two fines totaling $15,000.
Unlike the criminal trials awaiting him this year, including the trial over his alleged maneuvers aimed at overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump will not risk prison time in this civil case. But he plays big.
Even before the trial, Judge Engoron estimated in late September that the prosecution had presented “conclusive evidence that the defendants overstated the assets” of the group between 2014 and 2021 by “$812 million (to) $2.2 billion,” depending year, in Donald Trump's financial documents.
Because of “repeated fraud,” he ordered the liquidation of the companies that managed his assets, such as the Trump Tower on 5th Avenue and the 40 Wall Street skyscraper in Manhattan. However, the measures will be suspended on appeal.
The lawsuit involves other crimes such as insurance fraud and fines sought by the New York Attorney General's Office, which is now seeking $370 million, a far cry from the $250 million in the 2022 lawsuit. It is left to Judge Engoron to decide Discontinue proceedings and determine the amount of damage and compensation. A decision is expected in the coming weeks.