Donald Trump will come “pumped up” on Monday in New York to testify at the trial which threatens his real estate empire, assured Eric Trump on Friday, prosecuted with his brother Donald Jr and their father for vast financial frauds. Since Wednesday, the Manhattan courthouse has been the scene of a parade by the Trump family clan for this civil trial, without a jury, which started just a month ago. After Donald Jr and Eric this week, it will be the turn on Monday at 10 a.m. (3 p.m. GMT) of the former tenant of the White House, who dreams of returning there on January 20, 2025.
“My father will obviously be there [lundi]. I know he’s pumped. And he thinks it’s one of the most extraordinary injustices he’s ever seen,” said youngest son Eric Trump, 39, on the second day of his hearing before the New York Supreme Court. of first instance) chaired by Judge Arthur Engoron.
$250 million in damages
This civil trial in which the Attorney General of the State of New York, Letitia James, is seeking $250 million in damages for financial fraud “is a joke,” protested Eric Trump. “Hey guys, we’re going to win this case. I promise you that we will win because we didn’t make a single damn mistake,” he assured. And as he left the court at noon Friday when proceedings were suspended until Monday, Eric Trump called the trial a “charade.”
The Trump Organization family empire is in any case threatened because Judge Engoron had already ruled in a scathing order of September 26, before the trial, that Donald Trump, his sons and other executives were responsible for “repeated” financial “frauds” » in the 2010s. The former president does not risk prison but the civil verdict could make him lose control of part of his group, in addition to a heavy fine and the ban on managing companies At New York.
Fraud worth billions of dollars
So much so that Donald Jr, 45 years old, and Eric, the two vice-presidents of the group, with a very neat and almost identical appearance with chic suits and ties, had the same line of defense this week: they were not concerned not financial statements at the center of the trial, a task left to accountants.
It is from these annual financial statements of the Republican billionaire, a sort of photographs of his fortune listing his properties – such as the Trump Tower in Manhattan – that the New York State Attorney General’s Office accuses the Trumps of having inflated the value of the group’s assets in the 2010s. Fraudulent maneuvers amounting to billions of dollars, intended to obtain more favorable loans from banks and better insurance conditions, according to the accusation.