But this negative and, according to President Trump’s lawyers, highly prejudicial finding won’t stop the defense team from pursuing further rounds of witness testimony about how the Trump Organization did business and whether its dealings over the past 10-plus years were above board. Nor will it stop the defense from putting President Trump on the stand again.
Trump has arrived in court to observe the proceedings on Dec. 7, and will take the stand again for direct examination on Dec. 11.
Defense lawyers originally planned to direct-examine at least one other Trump family member during the trial’s end phase. Eric Trump was expected to testify again on Dec. 5. But in a surprise move, the Trump defense team announced that was off.
“Although Eric Trump was certainly prepared to testify again, his testimony is no longer necessary. He has already testified fully and well in the case,” defense lawyer Alina Habba said in a statement.
Ms. Habba went on to provide both a justification for Eric Trump not needing to testify further and a summary of points that she and lawyer Christopher Kise have made throughout the trial.
“The testimony in the case from Deutsche Bank representatives and the experts proves the bank sought after President Trump as a prized client, the bank conducted and relied on its own independent analysis, no loan had ever been in default, and the assets were actually more valuable than reported in the SFOCs [statements of financial condition]. The record cannot be more clear,” Ms. Habba said.
During the cross-examination, government lawyers repeatedly confronted President Trump, his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and his daughter Ivanka Trump with complex questions and didn’t give the witnesses space to develop their answers in depth—expecting them to reply with a yes or no—before raising new ones.
On Dec. 11, if not sooner, there will be an opportunity to detail in more depth the delegation of responsibility in the organization, the protocols followed when supplying banks with financial records, the classification of Trump family assets, and other issues.
The Role of Bankers and Accountants
Throughout the trial, President Trump has insisted that he and others relied heavily on the expertise of professional accountants and appraisers. He has claimed that while he never would have signed financial statements containing false information, such documents occupied relatively little time out of his frantic schedule.In his testimony on the stand on Nov. 3, the former president alternated between defending the legitimacy of the SFOCs and other records presented to Deutsche Bank, and openly questioning the impartiality and legitimacy of the proceedings.
“I’d been dealing with banks for 50 years, and I probably know banks as well as anybody. They don’t look at financial statements because that’s not what they are after,” President Trump said.
He went on to reiterate a key point of the defense’s case: that Deutsche Bank craved the prestige and revenue that would come from providing loans to President Trump and his organization, and that if President Trump himself wasn’t overly attentive to the fine print in the SFOCs, the bank, in the end, cared even less.
“They just weren’t a very important element in banks’ decision-making process. They paid little attention to these documents. They were more interested in the deal,” President Trump said.
“What they wanted was as much information as we could give them so that they could do their statements. If they had a problem with it, they would not have done the sale.”
The former president repeated a point that had grown familiar during the lengthy cross-examination of his three grown children and himself. Namely, that records and claims from as far back as 2012 fell outside the statute of limitations and that the prosecution was bending the rules in its zeal to convict him.
President Trump described his properties as immensely valuable assets. He noted that one of them, Trump Tower, happened to be near the intersection of 57th Street and Fifth Avenue, which he called “the best location in New York,” right between IBM offices and the high-end store Tiffany & Co.
“I view that as a great property, a great rental stream,” President Trump said, alluding again to one of the factors that can make a property worth more than dry valuations on an SFOC may indicate.
Besides rental income, these factors include proximity to oil-producing territory, as he has claimed in the case of his property in Aberdeen, Scotland, and the prestige that he argued comes through association with the Trump brand.
But all of the back-and-forth about the SFOCs, and whether the former president’s conduct in some way contravened accepted practices when dealing with a powerful bank, quickly gave way to a different argument.
A Judge’s Disdain
At moments during the testimony, the judge spoke as if the witness on the stand were an animal or an unruly child, instructing his attorney Mr. Kise to “control” his witness and threatening to “draw a negative inference.”At another point, Judge Engoron interrupted President Trump to speak across the room to prosecuting attorney Kevin Wallace.
“Mr. Wallace, I am sort of following your lead. If you want to let the witness ramble and be unresponsive, that is your decision,” the judge said.
Despite this comment from the judge seated just a few feet away from him, President Trump returned to the theme of his testimony and that of his sons and daughter.
“I’m worth billions of dollars more than the financial statements. So anything that would be a little off would be nonmaterial,” he said.
President Trump then argued that the disclaimer clauses found on the first pages of the SFOCs were more than sufficient to communicate to prospective lenders that the numbers in the SFOCs were estimates and didn’t absolve the banks of the responsibility to conduct any necessary diligence.
“We have a very important clause called a disclaimer clause. It holds up in any courtroom except maybe this courtroom. It says do your own diligence, do your own study. Don’t take anything from this statement for granted,” he said.
President Trump added that “every court in the country” except for that over which Judge Engoron presided recognizes disclaimer clauses.
For all his forbearance up to this point, the former president lashed out at the judge and New York Attorney General Letitia James, and their motives.
“People like you go around and try to hurt me and try to demean me, maybe for political reasons, in her case definitely for political reasons. ... Every legal scholar I’ve spoken to has said how could a thing like this be going on? It’s disgraceful,” he said.
“It is a disgrace that a case like this is going on. This is a political witch hunt, and I think she should be ashamed of herself.”
On Dec. 7, the Trump side will press ahead. Taking advantage of the “extraordinary latitude” that the defense feels it’s due after more than two months of self-indulgence on the part of the prosecution. When President Trump takes the stand on Dec. 11, he will have an opportunity to make his case to friendly counsel in greater depth.
But the former president and current 2024 aspirant may yet face further cross-examination before the lengthy trial is up.
