By Jennifer Peltz and Michael R. Sisak | Associated Press
NEW YORK — Former President Donald Trump returned to his civil fraud trial Thursday to spotlight his defense, renewing his complaints that the case is baseless and heaping praise on an accounting professor’s testimony that backed him up.
With testimony winding down after more than two months, the Republican 2024 presidential front-runner showed up to watch New York University accounting professor Eli Bartov.
The academic disputed the crux of New York State Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit: that Trump’s financial statements were filled with fraudulently inflated asset values for such signature assets as his Trump Tower penthouse and his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.
“My main finding is that there is no evidence whatsoever of any accounting fraud,” said Bartov, whom Trump’s lawyers hired to give expert perspective. Trump’s financial statements, he said, “were not materially misstated.”
He suggested that anything problematic — like a huge year-to-year leap in the estimated value of the Trump Tower triplex — was simply an error.
Even while campaigning to reclaim the presidency and fighting four criminal cases, Trump is devoting a lot of attention to the New York trial. He’s been a frustrated onlooker, a confrontational witness and a heated commentator outside the courtroom door.
Earlier in the trial, Trump attended several days and spent one on the witness stand while the state was presenting its case. But Thursday marked his first appearance since the defense has been calling its own witnesses. He’s due to testify again Monday.
He watched attentively Thursday, sometimes appearing to point out parts of documents to his lawyers, and at one point shaking his head when their adversaries objected to some of Bartov’s testimony. During breaks, he lauded Bartov’s testimony and assailed the lawsuit, which is putting Trump’s net worth on trial and threatens to disrupt the real estate empire that vaulted him to fame and the White House.
“This whole case is a fraud,” Trump declared, calling it an attempt “to influence an election.”
“We’re a failing nation because of things like this,” he said.
James’ lawsuit accuses Trump, his company and top executives including his sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr. of misleading banks and insurers by giving them financial statements that padded his net worth by billions of dollars.
The statements were provided to help secure deals, including loans at attractive interest rates available to hyperwealthy people. Some loans required updated statements each year.
Trump denies any wrongdoing, and he posits that the statements’ numbers actually fell short of his wealth. He has downplayed the documents’ importance in dealmaking, saying it was clear that lenders and others should do their own analyses. And he claims the case is a partisan abuse of power by James and Judge Arthur Engoron, both Democrats.
Bartov testified that financial statements are “only a first step in a long and complex process” of valuing assets and making lending decisions. He said that the estimates on such documents are inherently subjective “opinions of value,” and that differences in such opinions don’t mean that there’s fraud.
Calling Trump’s financial statements uncommonly detailed and “so transparent,” he said that accompanying notes told readers to evaluate the numbers for themselves, and “even my 9-year-old granddaughter” would understand that. So did major Trump lender Deutsche Bank, Bartov maintained.
A Deutsche Bank executive testified last month that bankers viewed clients’ self-reported net worth as “subjective or subject to estimates” and often “make some adjustments.” Another executive, now retired, testified earlier that he assumed the figures in Trump’s financial statements “were broadly accurate,” but the numbers were subjected to “sanity checks” and sometimes to sizable “haircuts.”
Such changes, Bartov said, showed that the bank appropriately reached its own conclusions about Trump’s wealth. He called James’ allegations of deceit “absurd.”
State lawyer Kevin Wallace complained that Bartov’s opinions on the bank’s approach strayed beyond his expertise, calling him “someone who’s hired to say whatever they want in this case.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself, talking to me like that!” Bartov exclaimed. “I am here to tell the truth.”
Engoron overrruled the state’s objection.
The attorney general’s office has also hired Bartov as an expert in the past.
Trump has regularly railed about the case on his Truth Social platform. But going to court in person affords him a microphone — in fact, many of them, on the news cameras positioned in the hallway. He often stops on his way into and out of the proceedings, which cameras can’t record, to expostulate and to cast various developments as victories.
His out-of-court remarks got him fined $10,000 Oct. 26, when Engoron decided Trump had violated a gag order that prohibits participants in the trial from commenting publicly on court staffers. Trump’s lawyers are appealing the gag order.
James hasn’t let Trump go unanswered.
“Here’s a fact: Donald Trump has engaged in years of financial fraud. Here’s another fact: When you break the law, there are consequences,” James’ office wrote this week on X, formerly Twitter.
The attorney general herself has often come to court when Trump is there, though she didn’t Thursday.
While the non-jury trial is airing claims of conspiracy, insurance fraud and falsifying business records, Engoron ruled beforehand that Trump and other defendants engaged in fraud. He ordered that a receiver take control of some of Trump’s properties, but an appellate court has held off on that order. The pause was extended indefinitely Thursday for the appeals process to play out.
At trial, James is seeking more than $300 million in penalties and a prohibition on Trump and other defendants doing business in New York.
Testimony is expected to conclude before Christmas. Closing arguments are scheduled in January, and Engoron is aiming for a decision by the end of that month.
Associated Press journalist Joseph Frederick contributed to this report.