Former US president Donald Trump was back in New York on Thursday to give a deposition in the state civil case accusing him of business fraud, as his legal woes continued to multiply.
Trump stayed at his Trump Tower skyscraper on Fifth Avenue near Central Park on Wednesday night and on Thursday prepared to answer questions behind closed doors in a $250m civil fraud lawsuit brought against him by the state’s attorney general, Letitia James.
James’s lawsuit against Trump accuses him and others of a decade-long scheme to manipulate property values and his own net worth in order to obtain favorable loans and tax benefits.
The lawsuit alleges that Trump misled banks and others about the value of his assets, including allegedly fraudulently inflating the value of 23 properties including his Florida Mar-a-Lago resort, Trump Tower and what was previously the Trump International Hotel, in Washington DC.
“The complaint demonstrates that Donald Trump falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to unjustly enrich himself and to cheat the system, thereby cheating all of us. He did this with the help of the other defendants,” James said last year.
The trial in the case is scheduled to begin on 2 October. Thursday’s deposition could be used to try to discredit any testimony Trump may give at trial, or be offered as testimony if he is unavailable to appear.
Meanwhile:
As Trump arrived in New York to address his legal woes with the state, an appeals court in Washington DC on Thursday refused to make a decision on a different set of lawsuits involving Trump and 79-year-old magazine writer E Jean Carroll, who has accused him of raping her nearly 30 years ago.
In another potential blow to the former Republican president, the court of appeals refused to consider whether Trump can be shielded from the first of two defamation lawsuits by Carroll, saying that it did not have sufficient information to decide whether he was acting as president when he accused Carroll of lying about the alleged incident.
According to Carroll, Trump raped her in the mid-1990s in the luxury New York department store Bergdorf Goodman. Trump has denied and crudely pushed back against the allegations, calling Carroll a “nut job” and her allegations a “hoax and a lie”, as well as a “complete con job”.
At one point, Trump also said: “She’s not my type.”
The Washington DC appeals court has sent the case back to the second US circuit court of appeals in Manhattan, which last September asked whether under local law Trump made his comments in his role as president, or in his personal capacity, as Carroll argued.
The Washington court said the second circuit court or a federal district judge in Manhattan should assess Trump’s role.
It’s all too complicated for me … I just want Trump banged up …
Oh, probably!
Long before Trump bagged the President’s job in 2016, he was involved in more lawsuits than the average business person!
It seems to be part and parcel of the way he does business.
From the 1980s until he was elected president in 2016, Donald Trump and his businesses were involved in over 4,000 legal cases in U.S. federal and state courts, including battles with casino patrons, million-dollar real estate lawsuits, personal defamation lawsuits, and over 100 business tax disputes.
He was also accused of sexual harassment and sexual assault.
In 2015, his lawyer Alan Garten called this “a natural part of doing business” in the United States
According to many commentators and Wiki,
While litigation is common in the real estate industry, Trump has been involved in more legal cases than his fellow magnates.
I don’t think the majority of voters did want the Trump maverick - he lost the majority vote of the people and only got in because of the Electoral College Votes
I’m just guessing, based on personal experience Boot, I have little knowledge of the US voting system but, it does seem to have some similarities to the mother countries system.
Trump arrived at James’s office before 10:00am (14:00 GMT) for the deposition, which was conducted in private, and returned to Trump Tower, his New York residence and headquarters of the Trump Organization, a little after 6:30pm (10:30 GMT).
Trump previously attended James’s office in August, during which he refused to answer most questions and invoked his right to silence several hundred times.
Christopher Kise, a lawyer for Trump’s businesses, said the former president spent nearly seven hours answering questions about his “extraordinary business success” and that “everyone will scoff at the notion any fraud took place” once the facts are out in the open.
Ahead of his testimony, Trump, who is facing a slew of civil and criminal investigations, described the lawsuit as “another unjust & ridiculous persecution”.
“This civil case is ridiculous, just like all of the other Election Interference cases being brought against me,” Trump wrote on his social media site Truth Social.
Between you me and the gatepost i have little or no interest in Trump, nor American “politics”
it seems to me that their entire economy is balanced on War, they need wars to exist, and if there are non, they will start one… Biden is up to his Neck in The Ukraine conflict
and i shudder to think what he was up to in Ireland… pouring oil onto the fire that always burns in that land… the hate of all things English…
Letitia James, a Democrat, is seeking summary judgment in her multimillion-dollar civil suit against the Trump Organization over its financial affairs.
In 2014, a year before entering politics and two years before winning the White House, Donald Trump inflated his net worth by as much as $2.2bn, lawyers for the attorney general of New York state alleged in court filings recently made public. Her office said in the documents:
“Mr Trump’s net worth in any year between 2011 and 2021 would be no more than $2.6bn, rather than the stated net worth of up to $6.1bn, and likely considerably less if his properties were actually valued in full-blown professional appraisals.”
According to the state filing, corrections to financial statements for the 10-year period in question would reduce Trump’s stated net worth by “17% [to] 39% in each year, or between $812m to $2.2bn, depending on the year”.
Trial is set for October. James’s lawyers argued no trial was needed “to determine that defendants presented grossly and materially inflated asset values … and then used those … repeatedly in business transactions to defraud banks and insurers”.
James is seeking $250m and for Trump and his sons to be disqualified from running businesses in New York.
Lawyers for Trump were due to file a response.
Trump’s financial affairs – his taxes and related claims about his personal wealth – became a national obsession in 2016, when he beat Hillary Clinton for the White House. Maggie Haberman, of the New York Times, has reported that Trump made up an excuse for not following convention and releasing his tax returns literally on the fly, on a campaign plane.
Trump never released his taxes but dogged and prize-winning reporting unearthed plentiful evidence of sharp practice. Late last year, Democratic members of the Congress released six years of Trump’s tax returns. Covering 2015 to 2020, they provided plenty of embarrassing information.
Reporting on proof that Trump and his wife, Melania, “paid $641,931 in federal income taxes in 2015 … $750 in 2016 and 2017, nearly $1m in 2018, $133,445 in 2019 and $0 in 2020”, the Guardian said: “Such numbers reflect heavy business losses and undermine Trump’s self-perpetuated narrative of commercial wealth and success – a crucial part of his brand during his successful 2016 campaign.”
The record reveals Trump to be a reckless conman who burned money and relied on his father, even as he was fashioning a myth that eventually took him all the way to the White House. No wonder he is so averse to allowing the American public to see any more accurate information about his financial history.
The bigger the lie, the more mugs believed Trump …
Trump declared bankruptcy so many times I lost count. It seemed like common knowledge. I can’t imagine people didn’t know that. People really thought he was successful? Mind boggling.
I just thought people were purposely overlooking the lack of success thing.
In the new filing, CNBC said, the attorney general, Letitia James, said she was “still [making] a conservative estimate” about by how much Trump’s net worth was overstated in annual financial statements. Trump’s net worth was exaggerated by between $1.9bn and $3.6bn, the filing said.
In the new filing on Friday, prosecutors said valuations experts arrived at the new figure for Trump’s overestimations of his worth by applying financial methods “market participants would consider when determining estimated current value”, ABC News reported.
Prosecutors added: “After factoring in these and other fundamental considerations that any informed buyer and seller in the marketplace would take into account, Mr Trump’s net worth would be further substantially reduced by between $1.9bn to $3.6bn per year, which is still a conservative estimate.”
Trial is set to begin on 2 October. Earlier this week, the judge in the case denied a Trump attempt to delay the trial which he said was “completely without merit”.
In a pre-trial phase of the case known as summary judgement, Ms James had asked Justice Arthur Engoron of the New York state court in Manhattan to rule on her claims.
She argued that finding certain facts to be beyond dispute would speed up the trial.
The decision resolves the key claim made by New York’s attorney general in her civil lawsuit against the former president.
It is a major blow for Mr Trump before the case goes to trial next Monday.
An attorney for Mr Trump called the judge’s decision “a miscarriage of justice” in a statement on Tuesday evening.
As part of Tuesday’s decision, the Trump Organization was ordered to cancel its New York business licenses and, within 10 days, recommend independent monitors who could oversee that process.
That is a legal loss for the New York native, who now lives in Florida.
The judge’s ruling will not dissolve his company but could end his control over signature New York properties like the Trump Tower and the Trump Building at 40 Wall Street.
Trump is due to get what’s coming to him. I’ve waited patiently, and his decades of dirty deals is going to suck the life out of him one trial at a time.
Ah, life is a fair justice if only we are patient.
Donald Trump’s real estate empire could collapse “like falling dominoes”, experts believe, following a New York judge’s ruling that the former president’s business fortune was built on rampant fraud and blatant lies.
At a hearing on Wednesday afternoon, Trump’s legal team asked Engoron if his ruling meant Trump’s assets and businesses must be sold, or if they could continue to operate under receivership.
Engoron said he would address the issue at the non-jury trial beginning on 2 October, and extended to 30 days his original 10-day deadline for both parties to suggest names to act as receivers for the various companies.
The lawyers have said they will appeal the rescinding of the licenses, the appointment of receivers, and Engoron’s assertion that Trump and executives lived in a “fantasy world” of routinely, repeatedly and illegally overvaluing property values and his personal net worth to gain favorable loan terms and reduced insurance premiums.
But if the appeals are unsuccessful, the collapse of the Trump empire, upon which the former reality TV host staked his reputation as a successful business tycoon, could be imminent.
It would probably start with the sale of Trump’s most prestigious real estate assets, experts say, including Trump Tower in New York, golf courses and resorts around the US, and possibly his prized Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, if it is determined to be a business operation instead of his primary residential home.
Rampant fraud and blatant lies - Trump’s best friends …
The former president, who is the favourite to be the Republican presidential candidate next year, is the central defendant in the civil trial which begins today at a courtroom in southern Manhattan.
Trump, along with several members of his family and other associates, is accused of inflating the value of the Trump property empire by billions of dollars to secure loans in a case brought by New York’s Attorney General Letitia James.
Trump had been expected not to attend this trial unless forced to testify. However, court documents in a separate lawsuit, published late last week, hint at a potential courtroom showdown with Judge Engoron who he has branded ‘deranged’.
Trump had been due in court in Florida in a case he brought to sue his former attorney, Michael Cohen. However he has sought to delay that case in order to appear in person at the New York trial instead.
Will he, won’t he …
Mr Trump said late on Sunday that he planned to be present at the start of the trial on Monday morning.
“I’m going to Court tomorrow morning to fight for my name and reputation,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform. “This whole case is a sham!!!”
The case is a bench trial, meaning it will be decided not by a jury but by Judge Engoron. He has said it could take as long as three months to hear the case.
If Trump does attend then he will, presumably, go with the full motorcade (for effect and affect), as in Georgia:
Most of the coverage of the first day of the case, with Trump attending, is, inevitably detailed but here’s a summary:
A defiant Trump attacked New York’s attorney general and the judge overseeing his civil fraud trial as it began on Monday, with a state lawyer accusing him of generating more than $100m by lying about his real estate empire.
What were the standout moments from the first day of the trial?
Trump doubles down on hostile rhetoric
Leaning into familiar themes, Trump attacked the trial and those involved with it as taking part in the “continuation of the single-greatest witch hunt” in US history.
Trump openly chastened Letitia James, the New York attorney general who brought the case against him, criticising a “disgraceful trial brought forward by an attorney general who is corrupt”. Trump also criticised New York Judge Arthur Engoron, who is overseeing the trial.
First witness takes to the stand
Donald Bender, a longtime accountant and tax consultant for Trump, testified about Trump’s tax practices such as reporting large losses on his tax returns every year for nearly a decade.
Lawyers for Trump attempted to issue a “blanket objection” to Bender’s testimony but were denied by Judge Engoron.
Trump arrived at a New York court just a few miles south of Trump Tower on Monday for the first day of the fraud trial amid a mass of TV cameras and reporters lined up outside the courthouse
“This is a continuation of the single greatest witch-hunt of all time,” Trump said as he headed into court. He said his financial statements were “phenomenal”, called the New York attorney general, Letitia James, who is black, a “racist” and a “horror show” and said the case was being overseen by a “rogue judge”.
“My message is simple: No matter how powerful you are, no matter how much money you think you may have, no one is above the law,” James said outside the court.
The New York supreme court justice Arthur Engoron, who is presiding over the case, will be the sole decider. Because this is a civil trial, Trump will not be sent to prison if he is found guilty nor does he have to make an appearance in court.
The state prosecutor Kevin Wallace outlined the government’s case against Trump. Wallace said that Trump and the other defendants violated the law by “presenting the statements as true while knowing they were false”. “They claim they weren’t involved in the valuation process,” Wallace said, but “there is ample evidence of intent.”
Speaking for the Trumps, the defense attorneys Christopher Kise and Alina Habba showered praise on Trump and said that the lenders were grateful to have done business with him. “President Trump has made billions of dollars building the most successful real estate empire in the world (1),” Kise said. The financial statements “represent a fraction of the overall business transaction of the overall business empire”. There were “no unjust profits, and there were no victims.”
Engoron said in his ruling that the attorney general’s office will have to provide evidence of “some component of intent and materiality” in Trump’s fraudulent financial statements – meaning proof that he intentionally inflated his assets for financial gain.
The trial is scheduled to run until 22 December , though it will likely not last that long as the judge’s pre-trial ruling settled a major question: whether Trump indeed committed fraud. Now the case is focused on how much he will have to pay for it.
Inevitably, verbal diarrhoea from Trump while his defense can’t even get simple facts right - Trump isn’t even in the top ten of successful real-estate “empire-builders” :
To fit the case into his wider “witch hunt” rhetoric, Mr Trump claimed that Ms James was corrupt, and that she was coordinating with and taking orders from the US Department of Justice.
“It’s all run by DOJ, which is corrupt, in Washington - everything goes through them,” he alleged.
“He has shown no evidence of coordination. Also, this is a civil fraud case based on New York state laws, not a federal one. The Justice Department has no jurisdiction here.”
It’s amazing how everyone who accuses Trump is corrupt.He’s a true martyr to the cause of justice.
“Consider this statement a gag order forbidding all parties from posting, emailing or speaking publicly about any of my staff,” the judge, Arthur Engoron, said on Tuesday afternoon. “Personal attacks on members of my court staff are unacceptable, inappropriate and I will not tolerate them in any circumstances. Failure to abide by this order will result in serious sanctions.”
The second day of Trump’s trial got off to another combative start after Trump branded the case a “fraud” and a “scam” and pledged to take the stand in his own defense. Asked if he would testify in the case, Trump said: “Yes, I will. At the appropriate time I will be.”
But Trump’s comments about Engoron’s law clerk, the attorney Allison Greenfield, proved a step too far. Over lunch Trump attacked Engoron’s clerk in a social media post, linking to a picture of her with the Democratic Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer. He called her “Schumer’s girlfriend” and said she “is running this case against me. How disgraceful! This case should be dismissed immediately.”
The post on Trump’s Truth Social platform was deleted on Engoron’s orders.
