It has not happened so often that a former US president takes the witness stand in court. Especially if he is the accused and still wants to go back to the White House. This is now happening more often with Donald Trump; he had to make his first statement to date after four criminal charges in various cases in this civil trial in New York around Monday afternoon. A year before the next presidential election, it was Trump’s turn to make his statement, instead of his red tie from the campaign, he wore a blue tie.
The allegation being negotiated is that the patron, his family and his Trump Organization, inflated the value of his real estate, sometimes absurdly, in order to gain advantages from lenders. Boasting about his supposedly fabulous deals also helped him significantly in his astonishing election victory in 2016. Trump was (and is) not only the political outsider who shows the establishment in Washington, but above all the supposedly incredibly rich entrepreneur and successful person who wants to run the country like a company.
The witness is in a bad mood: There could be $250 million in damages
Investigators are casting considerable doubt on his financial coups and his assets; the chief prosecutor is New York Attorney General Letitia James, for Trump the devil himself. Judge Arthur Engoron found in a summary trial in September that the clan had been cheating for years and ordered the withdrawal of his rights Trump’s business licenses and the dissolution of companies. Trump’s lawyers appealed. The trial now involves, among other things, allegedly false reports, insurance fraud and possible damages amounting to $250 million.
The accused entered room 300 in the Supreme Court in Manhattan in a correspondingly bad mood. He recently had to pay a fine because, despite the express ban, he repeatedly spoke disrespectfully about the responsible judiciary. As expected, Trump continued in the hall, as those who sat in it like him reported. “What’s going on here, how can something like this happen?” Trump said, as if he were leading the charge. He considers the mere question of the valuation of his Mar-a-Lago property in south Florida to be “a disgrace.”
This was “election interference” and “a political witch hunt,” Trump complained, his standard reaction. Prosecutor James should be ashamed. He also considers Judge Engoron to be unreasonable. “He,” that is, Engoron, “called me a fraud and knew nothing about me.” The judge recommended that he read the decision first. “I think the decision is fraudulent,” Trump said. “The fraud is on the court, not on me.”
The presidency kept him busy, he says. Only he wasn’t president at all
Engoron had to make an effort not to let the event turn into a Trump show – “this is not a political rally, this is a courtroom,” he said. Trump liked to call his private club Mar-a-Lago on the shores of Palm Beach the “Winter White House,” even though the building is more pink. Prosecutor Kevin Wallace asked Trump recently whether he really believed that Mar-a-Lago was worth $1.5 billion today. “I think between a billion and 1.5 billion,” he now answered. For the court, however, this is as exaggerated as the size and price of his apartment in Trump Tower.
According to the prosecution’s and Judge Engoron’s research, Mar-a-Lago is not even worth a tenth of the $412 million to $612 million that Trump was initially talking about. Trump denies any guilt of having manipulated in any way. In general, everyone in their company has the same responsibility. But he was more of an expert in real estate than anyone else and helped put together documents. “I looked at them, I saw them, and I may have made a few suggestions on occasion.” He even lowered the value of an object because he thought the numbers were too high. Mar-o-Lago, on the other hand, was underestimated, but he still didn’t intervene.
The judge also pointed out several times that Trump should stay on topic. “Irrelevant, irrelevant,” he interrupted when Trump spoke about the location of a golf course. When it came to his contribution to the 2021 financial statements, Trump replied that he had been busy with the presidency. He focused on “China, Russia and the security of our country,” to which the prosecutor reminded Wallace that Trump was not president in 2021.
Of course he wants to be that again. We will carry on, announced the accused campaigner Trump, “and hopefully we will do very well in every respect, and we will win the election, we will make America great again.” For now, he’s on trial.