The Trump civil fraud trial began on Monday, October 8th, and the judge expects it to last until sometime in December.
The case is against former president Donald Trump, his company, and two of his adult children. New York Attorney General Letitia James is seeking $250 million in penalties and a ban on Trump from doing business in New York, for allegations of conspiracy, insurance fraud, and falsifying business records.
The Judge in the case is Arthur F. Engoron. He is a judge of the supreme court 1st Judicial District in New York. He ran unopposed in the general election in 2015. He became a judge for the New York City Civil Court in 2003 and went to New York University School of Law.
Snapshots of Trump’s bank statements were given to officials, and James says they are wildly inflated. In 1994, Trump signed a document stating that his New York City penthouse was 10,996 feet, not the 30,000 feet that he later claimed. These documents were given to banks, insurers, and many others to make deals and secure loans.
The evidence was found in an email attachment and was shown in court by the former finance chief of Trump’s company, Allen Weisselberg, when he testified; “however, Trump denies any wrongdoing”.
Weisselberg said that he remembered seeing the email, not the attachment. He explained that the attachments were documents that he already had on the companies files in offices, but he never paid much attention to the apartment’s size because its value was only a fraction of Trump’s wealth.
“It was not something that was that important to me when looking at a $6 billion, $5 billion net worth” and, “I never even thought about the apartment. It was de minimis, in my mind,” stated Weisselberg using a Latin term that essentially means “too small to care about.”
The judge in the trial called former President Trump abruptly to the witness stand on Wednesday. The judge fined him $10,000 for violating his gag order, the second time in less than a week that Trump has been punished for his out-of-court comments. The judge stated that Trump said some very unnecessary things about his staff, and this was after the judge told all of the participants specifically to not talk about his staff.
Trump and his lawyers insisted that Trump’s comment to the clerk — “A person who’s very partisan sitting alongside” — was not actually about the clerk, and was supposed to be about Michael Cohen, a former Trump attorney who had been testifying. However, the judge stated that Trump was “not credible” and fined him.
As the trial enters its second month, on November 6th, Trump and his 3 eldest children are testifying. It was expected that his sons Eric and Donald Jr. would testify, but on Friday, the judge ruled that his daughter, Ivanka Trump, must also appear in court, rejecting her bid to avoid testifying in the trial.
