Trump Makes Courtroom Speech During Closing Arguments as He Faces Massive Penalties

Former President Donald Trump attends his trial in New York State Supreme Court in New York City on Dec. 7, 2023. David Dee Delgado/Getty Images

Former President Donald Trump was allowed five minutes to make his own case in the courtroom at the conclusion of his New York civil fraud trial on Jan. 11, after the presiding judge set limits and conditions on any speech the former president might give in court.

“Your honor, the financial statements were perfect,” President Trump said. “The banks got all their money back, the banks are happy as can be.

“I spoke to an executive at Zurich. They said, ‘You didn’t defraud us.’ There wasn’t one witness against us.”

He again described the case as a “political witch hunt” and said he should be the one receiving damages “for what they’ve taken this company through.”

“We have millions of pages of documents, they have nothing,” he said. “I’m an innocent man, I’ve been persecuted by somebody running for office. The legal scholars talking about this case, they find it disgraceful.”

He described the novel use of the consumer fraud statutes against him as “vicious.”

“What’s happened here, sir, is a fraud on me. And you know what happens, companies leave,” he said.

“I’ve done a lot of great things, I’ve built buildings all over the city, I’ve never had a problem.”

President Trump then accused New York Attorney General Letitia James of election interference, leading state Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron to ask defense attorney Chris Kise to “control” his client.

“Without all that, your honor, all these days and months and years and millions and millions of pages, they found nothing,” President Trump said. “And now they come in and she says I want a $250 million fine, now $370 million.”

President Trump wrapped up his statement shortly after, saying he should have been granted a directed verdict in his favor.

“Your honor, I did nothing wrong. They should pay me for what I’ve had to go through,” he said.

The trial began on Oct. 2, 2023, and has lasted 44 days. Justice Engoron said the earliest he would issue judgment is the end of this month.

Defense attorneys are expecting to appeal any ruling by Justice Engoron, pointing to the fact that he found President Trump liable for fraud in a Sept. 26, 2023, summary judgment, before the defense had even made its case during trial.

Defense Denies Fraud

The defense has spent a good deal of the trial arguing that no fraud occurred. During closing arguments, defense attorneys repeatedly argued that state attorneys had failed to prove intent to defraud or materiality of fraud.

At the center of the case are the Trump Organization’s statements of financial condition (SFC) from 2011 to 2021, which were unofficial documents that the organization used as marketing pieces, showing a summary of President Trump’s assets and net worth.

The defense rehashed testimony from a host of expert witnesses who had said the SFCs showed no fraud, displayed transparency rather than intent to defraud, and met generally accepted accounting principles. Experts also spoke to the valuation of Trump Organization properties featured in the SFCs and the methodologies used to reach those numbers, opining that the numbers weren’t inflated and were well within reason and addressing what the state characterized as misrepresentation of properties.

Valuation isn’t objective, they testified. And real estate is more art than science, defense attorney Alina Habba stated.

Mr. Kise repeatedly emphasized that those testimonies were unrebutted, which Justice Engoron took issue with.

The defense also argued that no lender or insurer testified that they were unhappy with President Trump’s business or had any issue with the Trump Organization’s assets or condition.

Afterward, President Trump headed to 40 Wall St. nearby, also known as the Trump Building, one of the contested properties in the case, to hold a news conference that overlapped with the state’s closing arguments.

State Argues Fraud ‘Central’ to Trump Business

Meanwhile, state attorney Andy Amer argued that evidence of intention and materiality was “beyond even clear and convincing, it was overwhelming and conclusive.”

State attorney Kevin Wallace argued that much of the defense’s case was irrelevant and ignored the fact that the state didn’t have to prove that fraud occurred because of the Sept. 26, 2023, summary judgment.

Mr. Amer argued that several Trump Organization properties were intentionally misrepresented in the SFCs, including that Mar-a-Lago was represented as a private residence instead of a social club and that rent-stabilized units in a Manhattan building were accounted for as market-price units to drive up their value.

State attorneys pointed to testimony from defendants Allen Weisselberg, former Trump Organization CFO, and Jeff McConney, former Trump Organization comptroller, in which they knowingly included specific asset values.

Done intentionally rather than by mistake, these representations showed intent to defraud, Mr. Amer argued.

The state couldn’t provide such testimony for defendants Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., however. Both trustees and executive vice presidents of the Trump Organization, the brothers dealt more with hands-on development and testified that they weren’t experts in accounting. Mr. Amer put forth a “theory of constructive knowledge” that they were aware of, responsible for, and therefore committed fraud in signing the SFCs after President Trump turned authority over to the trust, but he didn’t provide evidence.

State attorneys also argued that materiality wasn’t subjective, that a bank need not say they were defrauded by the Trump Organization to make it so.

“It’s not what these banks thought was material or immaterial, it’s what the reasonable banker would think based on the evidence,” Mr. Amer said.

Penalties

The attorney general has requested a broad range of penalties, arguing that the defendants are likely to engage in continued fraud if they don’t face heavy repercussions.

They’re seeking disgorgement of $370 million, up from the $250 million listed in the initial petition. That’s based on the calculation of what the Trump Organization would have paid in interest if rates were higher and SFC totals were lower, derived from a formula that a banking expert witness devised.

The state is also seeking to bar President Trump from doing business in New York state and with any New York-based financial institution permanently, which defense attorneys argued would effectively deny him “access anywhere in the world.”

The state would also bar Mr. Weisselberg and Mr. McConney from doing business in New York permanently, and Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. for five years.

The Trump Organization, which isn’t a corporation but a collection of several LLCs, would also be handed to an independent third-party monitor to manage for five years.

Mr. Kise argued that the attorney general was using a consumer fraud statute in an unprecedented manner, to confiscate President Trump’s property, all without a jury.

“The attorney general wants you to turn standard loan transactions into fraud,” he told the judge. “It’s just a substitution of the attorney general’s political judgment for that of sophisticated financial professionals conducting risk analysis.”

Justice Engoron had also ordered the immediate cancellation of President Trump’s business certificates at the dissolution of his LLCs before the trial, but the order was paused by an appeals court for at least the duration of the trial after the defense argued it would upend hundreds of Trump Organization employees’ livelihoods overnight.