What you should know
- In a final effort to make their case, lawyers for New York state and Donald Trump’s defense filed court papers Friday highlighting findings from more than 10 weeks ago. of testimony in his civil trial for commercial fraud.
- The documents preview closing arguments, scheduled for Thursday, in a lawsuit that has implications for the Republican presidential front-runner even as he fights against four criminal cases in various courts. The New York civil case could end up preventing him from doing business in the state where he built his real estate empire.
- New York Attorney General Letitia James filed the lawsuit, which accuses Trump, his company and key executives of deceiving banks and insurers by vastly inflating his net worth. James maintains that Trump obtained attractive rates on loans and insurance because of the wealth he claimed in his personal “statements of financial position,” or “SFCs,” for short.
NEW YORK — In a final effort to make their case, lawyers for New York state and Donald Trump’s defense filed court papers Friday outlining findings from more than 10 weeks ago. of testimony in his civil trial for commercial fraud.
The documents preview closing arguments, scheduled for Thursday, in a lawsuit that has implications for the Republican presidential front-runner even as he fights against four criminal cases in various courts. The New York civil case could end up preventing him from doing business in the state where he built his real estate empire.
New York Attorney General Letitia James filed the lawsuit, which accuses Trump, his company and key executives of deceiving banks and insurers by vastly inflating his net worth. James maintains that Trump obtained attractive rates on loans and insurance because of the wealth he claimed in his personal “statements of financial position,” or “SFCs,” for short.
The lawsuit alleges that the documents gave exorbitant values for golf courses, hotels and more, including the Trump’s former house in the tower which bears its same name in New York and its current home in the club Mar-a-Lago and Palm Beach, Florida.
“The conclusion that defendants intended to defraud in preparing and certifying Trump’s SFCs is inescapable,” Kevin Wallace, an attorney with James’ office, wrote in a filing Friday. “The countless deceptive schemes they employed to inflate asset values and conceal facts were so outrageous as to belie an innocent explanation.”
The defendants, including his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, deny any wrongdoing.
The former president claims that his financial statements were actually billions of dollars low, and that any overestimates, such as valuing his Trump Tower penthouse at nearly three times its actual size, were mere errors and made no difference to the bigger picture. of his fortune.
He also says the documents are essentially legal because they said the figures were not audited, among other warnings. The recipients understood them simply as starting points for their own analyses, the defense says.
“Errors or inaccuracies happen all the time in accounting,” lawyers Michael Madaio and Christopher Kise wrote in a filing Friday for Trump, his Trump Organization and some executives. Such errors do not amount to fraud unless there are indications of concealment, forgery, deception or the like, and there were none, the lawyers argued.
Separately, defense attorneys argued that the lawsuits against executive vice presidents Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. should be dismissed because they never had “anything more than peripheral knowledge of or participation in the creation, preparation or use” of their financial statements. father.
The sons relied on the work of other Trump Organization executives and an outside accounting firm that prepared those documents, attorneys Clifford Robert and Michael Farina said, echoing from the offspring’s own testimony.
His father too took the stand and made a series of comments in the courtroom hallway. He described the case as a political maneuver by James, Judge Arthur Engoron and other Democrats, saying they are abusing the legal system to try to cut off his chances of taking back the White House this year.
The verdict is up to the judge because James brought the case under a state law that does not allow a jury. Engoron has said that he hopes to make a decision by the end of this month.
He will weigh charges of conspiracy, insurance fraud and falsifying business records. But it ruled before trial on the lawsuit’s main claim, finding that Trump and other defendants engaged in fraud for years. With that ruling, the judge ordered a receiver to take control of some of the former president’s properties, but an appeals court froze that order for now.
What prosecutor Letitia James is looking for
Now, prosecutor Letitia James is seeking additional penalties of more than $300 million and wants Trump to be banned from doing business in New York.
According to sources with knowledge of the case, our sister network NBC news James is calling for a $370 million fine against former President Trump and his companies and a lifetime ban on the real estate industry in New York State. The prosecutor would also be asking that Trump, McConney and Weisselberg be prohibited from serving as officers or directors of New York corporations or entities.
On the other hand, according to sources, the prosecutor also requests five-year bans for Eric and Don Jr with the same conditions. After a 44-day trial, attorneys for the attorney general and Trump filed their post-trial motions right on the Friday noon deadline.
During the trial, Engoron fined Trump a total of $15,000 after finding that he violated a gag order prohibiting all trial participants from publicly commenting on the judge’s staff. The order was imposed after Trump defamed the judge’s top law clerk.
Trump’s lawyers are appealing the gag order.
2024-01-05 18:56:05
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