The civil trial against Donald Trump and two of his children, who are accused of vastly inflating their real estate assets over years, begins Monday in New York, threatening his business empire and the start of a legal marathon for the Republican favorite in the presidential election 2024.
The 77-year-old former president announced on Sunday evening that he would be present at the opening hearing on Monday in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, where he was called as a witness.
“I will go to court tomorrow morning to fight for my name and reputation,” the former real estate mogul said in a message posted late evening on the platform Truth Social, in which he referred to the New York attorney general as “the attorney general of “New York” is “corrupt” and the judge in charge of the case is “unbalanced.”
“This whole matter is a sham!!!!”,” he also wrote.
Donald Trump cannot be sentenced to prison in the case, but the trial will provide a preview of the legal events that are likely to disrupt his campaign for the Republican nomination.
Donald Trump has been criminally charged in four separate cases, which has so far done no harm to his popularity with the Republican base, and is due to appear in federal court in Washington starting March 4. He is accused of trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election won by Joe Biden.
He is subsequently tried by the New York State judiciary for accounting fraud and, after leaving the presidency, is sent to Florida for negligent handling of confidential documents.
The trial, which begins Monday, was suddenly thrown into jeopardy last week when Judge Arthur Engoron, who was presiding over the trial, ruled that “repeated fraud” had been established and that the New York attorney general’s office had already proven that Donald Trump and his group employees had “overstated” their assets by between $812 million and $2.2 billion from 2014 to 2021.
“Heavy hit”
As a result, this judge ordered the revocation of the New York State business licenses of Donald Trump and two of his children, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., executive vice presidents of the Trump Organization, as well as the forfeiture of the companies targeted by the complaint, so that these can be entrusted to the insolvency administrators.
If implemented, these sanctions would “deal a serious blow to Donald Trump’s ability to do business in New York state,” said Will Thomas, a business law professor at the University of Michigan.
Donald Trump, who made his fortune in real estate and casinos in the 1980s and promised to run the United States like his companies, then lost control of several of his group’s flagships, such as Trump Tower on 5th Avenue in Manhattan.
These properties are at the center of prosecutor Letitia James’ allegations: the area of the businessman’s triplex in Trump Tower was tripled and the building at 40 Wall Street was overvalued by $200 to $300 million in the statements.
The Trump Organization’s luxury Mar-a-Lago residence and several golf courses also appear in the filing.
The prosecutor is also demanding recognition of further violations of financial law and a fine of $250 million.
Dozens of witnesses
Donald Trump has always brushed aside the accusations and multiplied the attacks against the prosecutor James, an elected African American Democrat whom he called “racist,” and Judge Engoron, whom he describes as “deranged.”
In his Truth Social network, he argued that the lending banks had been compensated “in full, with interest, without default and without sacrifice.” The defense also intends to wage a direct battle over asset valuation.
The trial promises to be technical, with dozens of witnesses expected, including three of the Trump children, Eric, Donald Jr. and Ivanka, who were originally the subject of the lawsuit but were ultimately not prosecuted, or the Trump Organization’s former finance director, Allen Weisselberg. who was in prison after pleading guilty to tax fraud in another case against the group.
The witnesses also include Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, who has become one of his archenemies, as well as employees of lending banks or the accounting firm Mazars, which decided in 2021 to no longer work with the Trump Organization.