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He is to return Dec. 11, defense attorney Christopher Kise said.
Trump had plenty to say during his initial testimony Nov. 6 in the case, which has questioned his net worth, accused him of misleading banks and insurers and threatened his future in business in New York.
The Republican 2024 presidential front-runner denies all the allegations, and he used his first stint on the witness stand to lambaste the case, the judge and New York Attorney General Letitia James, who brought the lawsuit.
“People don't know how good a company I built. You know why?" Trump complained as one of James’ deputies questioned him. “Because people like you go around and try and demean me and try and hurt me, probably for political reasons.”
He called James “a political hack" and dismissed a pretrial ruling against him as a “fraud on behalf of the court."
The second round of Trump's testimony could be still more expansive. James' office led the questioning the first time; next month, that role goes to Trump's own lawyers, and they can ask about a wider range of subjects than they could during cross-examination before.
When Trump's son, company Executive Vice President Donald Trump Jr., testified for the defense this month, for instance, he lauded his father, traced the family’s history in business back to the late 1800s and talked the court through a glossy slideshow replete with sumptuous photos of skyscraper views, golf fairways, ballrooms, roof terraces and estates.
Eric Trump, who is Trump Jr.'s brother and fellow EVP, is due to testify for the defense Dec. 6, Kise said. Both Trump sons also testified during the attorney general's part of the case.
Now finishing its second month, the trial is putting a spotlight on the real estate empire that vaulted Trump into public life and eventually politics. He maintains that James, a Democrat, is trying to damage his campaign.
At the heart of the case are Trump’s 2014 to 2021 annual “statements of financial condition,” which were used to help secure loans and other deals.
A Trump Organization executive testified Monday that the company no longer produces such statements.
The company continues to prepare various audits and other financial reports specific to some of its components, but “there is no roll-up financial statement of the company," said Mark Hawthorn, the chief operating officer of the Trump Organization’s hotel arm.
He wasn't asked why the comprehensive reports had ceased but said they are “not required by any lender, currently, or any constituency.”
Messages seeking comment on the matter were sent to spokespeople for the Trump Organization.
Hawthorn, a certified public accountant, has worked since 2016 for the company's Trump Hotels arm. Trump Jr. testified earlier that Hawthorn is functioning as the entire Trump Organization's chief financial officer, calling him “the finance guy within Trump world now" and saying the CPA “has taken on all those decisional responsibilities.”
But Hawthorn said it was incorrect to say “all.”
Defense lawyer Clifford Robert used Hawthorn's testimony to try to show that companies under the Trump Organization’s umbrella have produced reams of financial documents “that no one had a problem with." A lawyer for James' office, Andrew Amer, stressed that the suit is about Trump's overall statements of financial condition, calling the other documents irrelevant.
Trump asserts that his wealth was understated, not overblown, on his financial statements. He also notes that the numbers came with disclaimers saying that they weren’t audited and that others might reach different conclusions about his financial position.
Judge Arthur Engoron, who will decide the verdict in the non-jury trial, has already ruled that Trump and other defendants engaged in fraud. The current proceeding is to decide remaining claims of conspiracy, insurance fraud and falsifying business records.
James wants the judge to impose over $300 million in penalties and to ban Trump from doing business in New York — and that’s on top of Engoron’s pretrial order that a receiver take control of some of Trump’s properties. An appeals court has frozen that order for now.
___
Associated Press writer Michael R. Sisak contributed.
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So I just read a story that Don's lawyers in Colorado are challenging the measure to get him off the ballot by saying he never took the oath to uphold the constitution. So he can't be held accountable by it for trying to steal the election...
So I just read a story t7hat Don's lawyers in Colorado are challenging the measure to get him off the ballot by saying he never took the oath to uphold the constitution. So he can't be held accountable by it for trying to steal the election...
support is what I've seen.
if preserve and protect dont indicate or infer support or upholding, what the fuck are we doing?
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So I just read a story t7hat Don's lawyers in Colorado are challenging the measure to get him off the ballot by saying he never took the oath to uphold the constitution. So he can't be held accountable by it for trying to steal the election...
support is what I've seen.
if preserve and protect dont indicate or infer support or upholding, what the fuck are we doing?
The same people who were up in arms over Hilary's emails care more about Hunter's laptop than they do the classified documents trump stole away to Mar A Lago or January 6th etc etc.
They would rather burn the country down than share it with people they don't like, That's what we are doing here.
And I suppose this illustrates how “smart” POOTWH is, right? I mean we should all be able to go into a bank, over value our home or other property, borrow 10Xs or more against it and add a disclaimer that basically says, “everything I’ve represented may be ‘worthless,’” right? Damn right!
Defense calling real estate expert to stand
Donald Trump's lawyers are calling real estate expert Robert Unell as a witness this morning.
Unell is one of several defense experts who submitted reports to the court disputing the New York attorney general's findings that Trump committed fraud in the statements of financial condition he provided to lenders.
"The financial information provided to the lenders was correct in all material respects and contrary to the Plaintiff's allegations, therefore the Defendants did not receive any financial benefits on commercial real estate loans based on the submission of any false, inflated, or misleading valuations," Unell wrote in his expert report.
Unell, in the deposition he gave to the defense, also defended Trump's use of a disclaimer -- which Trump has said is sometimes referred to as a "worthless clause" -- that warned lenders that Trump's statements might contain information that does not comply with standard accounting practices.
"I first read it in President Trump's deposition," Unell said regarding Trump's use of the "worthless clause" phrase. "And it kind of stuck. Because, quite honestly, I had never heard it called that, but it is truly what the meaning of it is."
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14 questions, answered correctly, and you too can be hired for the next POOTWH administration. You’ll have to supply your own flared pants and jackboots. However, there is a stipend.
Bottom of the link has the two questionnaires with a total of 14 questions. I might ask ChatGPT and mail it in. Shits and giggles.
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This, beginning with the second to last sentence that begins with “Instead.”
There are numerous references throughout this book that aptly describe POOTWH and his supporters by way of examples of past behaviour, widely accepted medical science and history. But you know, chaos agent Dems.
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not sure where to put this, but lmao at rudy g. news is reporting that rudy has to pay nearly 150 million in damages.
But he'll likely never pay a dime. He gets that right out of the Trump playbook.
What a way to end your life though completely disavowed by most sane folks! He had his moments of being a hero because of a despicable act of terror! Threw it all away
After 40 witnesses and 43 days of testimony, here's what we learned at Trump’s civil fraud trial
By MICHAEL R. SISAK and JENNIFER PELTZ
Today
NEW YORK (AP) — After hearing from 40 witnesses over 2½ months, Judge Arthur Engoron sounded almost wistful as he presided over the last day of testimony in former President Donald Trump’s civil business fraud trial.
“In a strange way, I’m gonna miss this trial,” he said Wednesday.
Things aren't over yet in the case, in which New York Attorney General Letitia James has accused Trump of inflating his wealth on financial statements used to secure loans and make deals.
Closing arguments are scheduled for early January. The judge has already ruled that Trump is liable for making fraudulent statements, but other claims and a potential final penalty still need to be decided. Trump denies any wrongdoing. He says the financial documents actually understated his net worth and came with caveats that should shield him from liability.
The trial has offered fresh insight into Trump’s finances, his dealings with lenders, his aspiration to be an NFL owner, and some of the fuzzy math — mistaken or intentional — at issue in the case.
The trial also gave a glimpse of the Republican 2024 presidential front-runner's political and legal strategies as his court and campaign calendars increasingly overlap. The first of his four criminal trials is scheduled for March.
So far, Trump's legal woes aren't denting his standing in the Republican presidential race. He leads by a wide margin in national and early-state polls. In fact, his lead is stronger than it was before his first criminal indictment in March.
Here are some other things we learned from the trial:
COURT AS A CAMPAIGN STOP
Trump wasn't required to be in court, except for the one day he testified, but he showed up eight times as a spectator.
Every time, he turned his appearance into a de facto campaign stop, griping outside the courtroom that he was being persecuted. He had the same message during his often defiant turn on the witness stand Nov. 6.
“This is a very unfair trial, very, very. And I hope the public is watching it,” Trump said. His testimony led a frustrated Engoron to warn, “This is not a political rally.”
Why attend the fraud trial? "Because I want to point it out to the press, how corrupt it is,” Trump said.
Outside court, he frequently insulted the judge and even Engoron's chief law clerk. After Trump made a false, disparaging comment about the clerk's personal life on social media, Engoron imposed a gag order barring trial participants from commenting further about court staff.
The judge later found that Trump repeatedly violated the order and fined him $15,000.
TRUMP AND THE BANK
Much of the trial was devoted to the hundreds of millions of dollars Deutsche Bank loaned Trump’s company, starting in 2011.
The state says Trump rooked his way into the financing, at attractive interest rates, by padding his wealth. The defendants say they didn't and maintain the bank was delighted with the loans. All were paid off, the last of them during the trial.
Dueling experts debated whether those adjustments showed that the bank didn’t rely on Trump’s numbers and that he was rich enough to qualify for the loans anyway (as the defense contends) or whether the “haircuts” were essentially standard deductions that didn’t compensate for his alleged inflation (the state’s view).
As for the bankers' own views of their dealings with Trump, testimony was often oblique.
For example, when retired Deutsche Bank risk management officer Nicholas Haigh was asked whether the loans were a good credit decision, he demurred that it was “a subjective question” but said the bankers did a good job analyzing the information they had. But he also said the bank needs a true picture of risk to set interest rates.
Managing Director David Williams and former colleague Rosemary Vrablic said they hadn't been troubled by big gaps between Trump's and the bank's estimates of his assets.
A ‘WHALE’ OF A CLIENT
What was clear was that Deutsche Bank’s private wealth management division, which caters to rich people, was eager to lend to Trump.
Testimony and internal documents showed the bankers courted him as a big-dollar “whale” of a client who could connect them to “the wealthiest people on the planet.” Alongside the loan deals came multimillion-dollar bank deposits from Trump, and the bankers envisioned “cross-selling” him lucrative, fee-based services such as estate planning.
There was little mention at the trial of Trump’s tempestuous prior relationship with a different part of Deutsche Bank. Amid the 2008 financial crisis, Trump defaulted on a loan that Deutsche’s commercial real estate division had provided for a Chicago hotel and condo skyscraper. He sued, accusing the bank of “predatory lending.” Deutsche countersued. They settled.
Not long after, Trump’s company again approached Deutsche’s commercial real estate group while bidding to buy the Doral golf resort near Miami.
But the Trump Organization found a considerably lower interest rate through Deutsche’s private wealth management bankers, who were introduced to the Trumps by the former president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. The private bankers ultimately made loans for Doral, a Washington hotel and even the same Chicago skyscraper involved in the lawsuit.
The deals required guarantees that Donald Trump would pay personally if necessary, so they came with conditions about his net worth and, sometimes, liquidity. Hence the scrutiny of his financial statements, which he often was required to submit annually.
BIDDING FOR THE BUFFALO BILLS
Before vying for the White House, Trump tried to buy the Buffalo Bills, offering $1 billion for the NFL franchise in 2014. Emails aired at the trial shed new light on how Trump was seen behind the scenes.
Investment bankers involved in shopping the team said Trump’s history of owning Atlantic City casinos and his leading role, as owner of the New Jersey Generals, in the rival USFL’s 1980s antitrust lawsuit against the NFL gave him “little chance of being approved” by the league.
“That being said, his strong show of support doesn’t hurt the process,” then-Morgan Stanley executive K. Don Cornwell wrote to colleagues in April 2014.
“He probably does have the dough,” colleague Jeffrey Holzschuh wrote back, adding, “but never know the real facts with him.”
Trump claimed his net worth was over $8 billion in an initial offer letter but never provided his financial statements. Trump’s then-lawyer Michael Cohen told the bankers the financial records would be released only when Trump was “the final bidder.”
Instead, at a presentation to the bankers, Trump handed out copies of one of Forbes magazine’s lists of wealthy celebrities, Cornwell testified.
While running for president in 2016, Trump told The Associated Press that had he bought the Bills, "I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing."
THE TRIPLED TRUMP TOWER TRIPLEX
He built it. He lived in it. Yet from at least 2012-2016, the former president’s Trump Tower triplex penthouse was valued in his financial statements as though it measured 30,000 square feet (2,800 square meters), nearly three times its actual size.
How did this happen, especially since Trump had signed a 1994 document that correctly listed 10,996 square feet (1,022 square meters)?
Former Trump Organization controller Jeffrey McConney said he got the 30,000-square-foot figure from Kevin Sneddon in the company’s realty sales arm. Sneddon said he got it from former Trump Organization finance chief Allen Weisselberg, who said he didn’t “walk around knowing the size” of the apartment.
As for Trump, he maintained that “they just made a mistake." He also suggested the high number is “not that far off” when factoring in his access to the building roof.
“As we’re sitting here now, do you know how big your apartment is?” state lawyer Kevin Wallace asked.
“I have heard, obviously, because of the trial, they say 11-to-12-to-13,000 feet,” Trump replied.
After Forbes publicly reported the discrepancy in 2017, the Trump Organization adjusted the size and dropped the estimated value from $327 million to about $117 million.
WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE TRIAL?
The trial involves six claims, including allegations of conspiracy and insurance fraud. James is seeking penalties over $300 million and wants Trump banned from doing business in New York.
Both sides have until Jan. 5 to submit written arguments. They will return to the courthouse for summations Jan. 11, just four days before the Iowa caucuses start.
Engoron said he hopes to have a decision by the end of January.
Meanwhile, Trump's lawyers are appealing Engoron’s pretrial fraud ruling. They are preparing to appeal if they lose on the remaining issues.
When they said this week they were laying the groundwork for that, the judge quipped, “You’re going to appeal?”
___
Associated Press writers John Wawrow in Buffalo, New York, and Jill Colvin contributed to this report.
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Comments
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and even more true in two weeks.
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NEW YORK (AP) — After a pugnacious first turn on the witness stand, former president Donald Trump plans to testify again next month in his civil fraud trial, his lawyers said Monday.
He is to return Dec. 11, defense attorney Christopher Kise said.
Trump had plenty to say during his initial testimony Nov. 6 in the case, which has questioned his net worth, accused him of misleading banks and insurers and threatened his future in business in New York.
The Republican 2024 presidential front-runner denies all the allegations, and he used his first stint on the witness stand to lambaste the case, the judge and New York Attorney General Letitia James, who brought the lawsuit.
“People don't know how good a company I built. You know why?" Trump complained as one of James’ deputies questioned him. “Because people like you go around and try and demean me and try and hurt me, probably for political reasons.”
DONALD TRUMP
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He called James “a political hack" and dismissed a pretrial ruling against him as a “fraud on behalf of the court."
The second round of Trump's testimony could be still more expansive. James' office led the questioning the first time; next month, that role goes to Trump's own lawyers, and they can ask about a wider range of subjects than they could during cross-examination before.
When Trump's son, company Executive Vice President Donald Trump Jr., testified for the defense this month, for instance, he lauded his father, traced the family’s history in business back to the late 1800s and talked the court through a glossy slideshow replete with sumptuous photos of skyscraper views, golf fairways, ballrooms, roof terraces and estates.
Eric Trump, who is Trump Jr.'s brother and fellow EVP, is due to testify for the defense Dec. 6, Kise said. Both Trump sons also testified during the attorney general's part of the case.
Now finishing its second month, the trial is putting a spotlight on the real estate empire that vaulted Trump into public life and eventually politics. He maintains that James, a Democrat, is trying to damage his campaign.
At the heart of the case are Trump’s 2014 to 2021 annual “statements of financial condition,” which were used to help secure loans and other deals.
A Trump Organization executive testified Monday that the company no longer produces such statements.
The company continues to prepare various audits and other financial reports specific to some of its components, but “there is no roll-up financial statement of the company," said Mark Hawthorn, the chief operating officer of the Trump Organization’s hotel arm.
He wasn't asked why the comprehensive reports had ceased but said they are “not required by any lender, currently, or any constituency.”
Messages seeking comment on the matter were sent to spokespeople for the Trump Organization.
Hawthorn, a certified public accountant, has worked since 2016 for the company's Trump Hotels arm. Trump Jr. testified earlier that Hawthorn is functioning as the entire Trump Organization's chief financial officer, calling him “the finance guy within Trump world now" and saying the CPA “has taken on all those decisional responsibilities.”
But Hawthorn said it was incorrect to say “all.”
Defense lawyer Clifford Robert used Hawthorn's testimony to try to show that companies under the Trump Organization’s umbrella have produced reams of financial documents “that no one had a problem with." A lawyer for James' office, Andrew Amer, stressed that the suit is about Trump's overall statements of financial condition, calling the other documents irrelevant.
Trump asserts that his wealth was understated, not overblown, on his financial statements. He also notes that the numbers came with disclaimers saying that they weren’t audited and that others might reach different conclusions about his financial position.
Judge Arthur Engoron, who will decide the verdict in the non-jury trial, has already ruled that Trump and other defendants engaged in fraud. The current proceeding is to decide remaining claims of conspiracy, insurance fraud and falsifying business records.
James wants the judge to impose over $300 million in penalties and to ban Trump from doing business in New York — and that’s on top of Engoron’s pretrial order that a receiver take control of some of Trump’s properties. An appeals court has frozen that order for now.
___
Associated Press writer Michael R. Sisak contributed.
___
Tracking the criminal and civil cases against Donald Trump (apnews.com)
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There are no kings inside the gates of eden
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They would rather burn the country down than share it with people they don't like, That's what we are doing here.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/29/trump-financial-watchdog-tells-judge-about-40-million-in-previously-unreported-transfers.html
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He's going to win again.
Defense calling real estate expert to stand
Donald Trump's lawyers are calling real estate expert Robert Unell as a witness this morning.
Unell is one of several defense experts who submitted reports to the court disputing the New York attorney general's findings that Trump committed fraud in the statements of financial condition he provided to lenders.
"The financial information provided to the lenders was correct in all material respects and contrary to the Plaintiff's allegations, therefore the Defendants did not receive any financial benefits on commercial real estate loans based on the submission of any false, inflated, or misleading valuations," Unell wrote in his expert report.
Unell, in the deposition he gave to the defense, also defended Trump's use of a disclaimer -- which Trump has said is sometimes referred to as a "worthless clause" -- that warned lenders that Trump's statements might contain information that does not comply with standard accounting practices.
"I first read it in President Trump's deposition," Unell said regarding Trump's use of the "worthless clause" phrase. "And it kind of stuck. Because, quite honestly, I had never heard it called that, but it is truly what the meaning of it is."
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https://www.axios.com/2023/12/01/trump-government-job-applications-2025
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Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
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Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
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https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/12/politics/missing-russia-intelligence-trump-dg/
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"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
NEW YORK (AP) — After hearing from 40 witnesses over 2½ months, Judge Arthur Engoron sounded almost wistful as he presided over the last day of testimony in former President Donald Trump’s civil business fraud trial.
“In a strange way, I’m gonna miss this trial,” he said Wednesday.
Things aren't over yet in the case, in which New York Attorney General Letitia James has accused Trump of inflating his wealth on financial statements used to secure loans and make deals.
Closing arguments are scheduled for early January. The judge has already ruled that Trump is liable for making fraudulent statements, but other claims and a potential final penalty still need to be decided. Trump denies any wrongdoing. He says the financial documents actually understated his net worth and came with caveats that should shield him from liability.
The trial has offered fresh insight into Trump’s finances, his dealings with lenders, his aspiration to be an NFL owner, and some of the fuzzy math — mistaken or intentional — at issue in the case.
DONALD TRUMP
With Iowa's caucuses a month away, Trump urges voters to hand him not just a victory, but a blowout
Trump seeks decisive Iowa caucus victory to secure presidential lead
Giuliani blasts Biden on his way out of court
Nikki Haley makes final push as Iowa caucus approaches
The trial also gave a glimpse of the Republican 2024 presidential front-runner's political and legal strategies as his court and campaign calendars increasingly overlap. The first of his four criminal trials is scheduled for March.
So far, Trump's legal woes aren't denting his standing in the Republican presidential race. He leads by a wide margin in national and early-state polls. In fact, his lead is stronger than it was before his first criminal indictment in March.
Here are some other things we learned from the trial:
COURT AS A CAMPAIGN STOP
Trump wasn't required to be in court, except for the one day he testified, but he showed up eight times as a spectator.
Every time, he turned his appearance into a de facto campaign stop, griping outside the courtroom that he was being persecuted. He had the same message during his often defiant turn on the witness stand Nov. 6.
“This is a very unfair trial, very, very. And I hope the public is watching it,” Trump said. His testimony led a frustrated Engoron to warn, “This is not a political rally.”
Trump didn’t go to court last year when his company was convicted of tax fraud. Nor did he show for a civil trial where a jury found him liable for sexually assaulting writer E. Jean Carroll and ordered him to pay her $5 million.
Why attend the fraud trial? "Because I want to point it out to the press, how corrupt it is,” Trump said.
Outside court, he frequently insulted the judge and even Engoron's chief law clerk. After Trump made a false, disparaging comment about the clerk's personal life on social media, Engoron imposed a gag order barring trial participants from commenting further about court staff.
The judge later found that Trump repeatedly violated the order and fined him $15,000.
TRUMP AND THE BANK
Much of the trial was devoted to the hundreds of millions of dollars Deutsche Bank loaned Trump’s company, starting in 2011.
The state says Trump rooked his way into the financing, at attractive interest rates, by padding his wealth. The defendants say they didn't and maintain the bank was delighted with the loans. All were paid off, the last of them during the trial.
Several Deutsche bankers testified that they expected unaudited financial statements like Trump’s to be generally accurate but understood them as estimates and internally made “haircuts” that at times lopped billions off Trump’s net worth, which still left it at over $2 billion.
Dueling experts debated whether those adjustments showed that the bank didn’t rely on Trump’s numbers and that he was rich enough to qualify for the loans anyway (as the defense contends) or whether the “haircuts” were essentially standard deductions that didn’t compensate for his alleged inflation (the state’s view).
As for the bankers' own views of their dealings with Trump, testimony was often oblique.
For example, when retired Deutsche Bank risk management officer Nicholas Haigh was asked whether the loans were a good credit decision, he demurred that it was “a subjective question” but said the bankers did a good job analyzing the information they had. But he also said the bank needs a true picture of risk to set interest rates.
Managing Director David Williams and former colleague Rosemary Vrablic said they hadn't been troubled by big gaps between Trump's and the bank's estimates of his assets.
A ‘WHALE’ OF A CLIENT
What was clear was that Deutsche Bank’s private wealth management division, which caters to rich people, was eager to lend to Trump.
Testimony and internal documents showed the bankers courted him as a big-dollar “whale” of a client who could connect them to “the wealthiest people on the planet.” Alongside the loan deals came multimillion-dollar bank deposits from Trump, and the bankers envisioned “cross-selling” him lucrative, fee-based services such as estate planning.
There was little mention at the trial of Trump’s tempestuous prior relationship with a different part of Deutsche Bank. Amid the 2008 financial crisis, Trump defaulted on a loan that Deutsche’s commercial real estate division had provided for a Chicago hotel and condo skyscraper. He sued, accusing the bank of “predatory lending.” Deutsche countersued. They settled.
Not long after, Trump’s company again approached Deutsche’s commercial real estate group while bidding to buy the Doral golf resort near Miami.
But the Trump Organization found a considerably lower interest rate through Deutsche’s private wealth management bankers, who were introduced to the Trumps by the former president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. The private bankers ultimately made loans for Doral, a Washington hotel and even the same Chicago skyscraper involved in the lawsuit.
The deals required guarantees that Donald Trump would pay personally if necessary, so they came with conditions about his net worth and, sometimes, liquidity. Hence the scrutiny of his financial statements, which he often was required to submit annually.
BIDDING FOR THE BUFFALO BILLS
Before vying for the White House, Trump tried to buy the Buffalo Bills, offering $1 billion for the NFL franchise in 2014. Emails aired at the trial shed new light on how Trump was seen behind the scenes.
Investment bankers involved in shopping the team said Trump’s history of owning Atlantic City casinos and his leading role, as owner of the New Jersey Generals, in the rival USFL’s 1980s antitrust lawsuit against the NFL gave him “little chance of being approved” by the league.
“That being said, his strong show of support doesn’t hurt the process,” then-Morgan Stanley executive K. Don Cornwell wrote to colleagues in April 2014.
“He probably does have the dough,” colleague Jeffrey Holzschuh wrote back, adding, “but never know the real facts with him.”
Trump claimed his net worth was over $8 billion in an initial offer letter but never provided his financial statements. Trump’s then-lawyer Michael Cohen told the bankers the financial records would be released only when Trump was “the final bidder.”
Instead, at a presentation to the bankers, Trump handed out copies of one of Forbes magazine’s lists of wealthy celebrities, Cornwell testified.
The owners of the National Hockey League's Buffalo Sabres, Terry and Kim Pegula, ultimately bought the Bills for $1.4 billion.
While running for president in 2016, Trump told The Associated Press that had he bought the Bills, "I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing."
THE TRIPLED TRUMP TOWER TRIPLEX
He built it. He lived in it. Yet from at least 2012-2016, the former president’s Trump Tower triplex penthouse was valued in his financial statements as though it measured 30,000 square feet (2,800 square meters), nearly three times its actual size.
How did this happen, especially since Trump had signed a 1994 document that correctly listed 10,996 square feet (1,022 square meters)?
Former Trump Organization controller Jeffrey McConney said he got the 30,000-square-foot figure from Kevin Sneddon in the company’s realty sales arm. Sneddon said he got it from former Trump Organization finance chief Allen Weisselberg, who said he didn’t “walk around knowing the size” of the apartment.
As for Trump, he maintained that “they just made a mistake." He also suggested the high number is “not that far off” when factoring in his access to the building roof.
“As we’re sitting here now, do you know how big your apartment is?” state lawyer Kevin Wallace asked.
“I have heard, obviously, because of the trial, they say 11-to-12-to-13,000 feet,” Trump replied.
After Forbes publicly reported the discrepancy in 2017, the Trump Organization adjusted the size and dropped the estimated value from $327 million to about $117 million.
WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE TRIAL?
The trial involves six claims, including allegations of conspiracy and insurance fraud. James is seeking penalties over $300 million and wants Trump banned from doing business in New York.
Both sides have until Jan. 5 to submit written arguments. They will return to the courthouse for summations Jan. 11, just four days before the Iowa caucuses start.
Engoron said he hopes to have a decision by the end of January.
Meanwhile, Trump's lawyers are appealing Engoron’s pretrial fraud ruling. They are preparing to appeal if they lose on the remaining issues.
When they said this week they were laying the groundwork for that, the judge quipped, “You’re going to appeal?”
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Associated Press writers John Wawrow in Buffalo, New York, and Jill Colvin contributed to this report.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14