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Skip to contentSkip to site indexSearch & Section NavigationSection NavigationSEARCHNew York Today’s PaperNew York|What We Can Expect Donald Trump to Say in Court Todayhttps://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/06/nyregion/trump-fraud-trial-testimony-what-to-expect.htmlShare full article+AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTNewsletterNew York TodayWhat We Can Expect Donald Trump to Say in Court TodayWhen he takes the stand in his civil fraud trial, the former president is likely to testify that he was too busy to bother with the details of forms for banks.Share full article+By James BarronNov. 6, 2023, 5:03 a.m. ETGood morning. It’s Monday. We’ll find out what to listen for today when Donald Trump testifies in his civil trial in Manhattan.ImageCredit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesToday, the 24th witness in Donald Trump’s civil trial in Manhattan will take the stand: It’s Trump himself.He will try to preserve the business holdings that are at the heart of his public persona. The trial is about whether Trump should pay a penalty for committing fraud. The judge, Arthur Engoron, has already ruled that Trump’s annual financial statements “clearly contain fraudulent valuations.” The state attorney general, Letitia James, who brought the case, says that Trump overvalued his holdings by as much as $2.2 billion. She says the penalty should be $250 million.I asked Susanne Craig, who shared a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on Trump’s finances and taxes and who has been covering the trial, what to expect when Trump testifies.What will you be listening for?If you think of the story of Donald Trump, it’s the story of his money. It’s his essence, and that is why he is so agitated about this trial. He has been lying about his net worth for so long, I think he has come to believe the false narrative he has laid down.His first defense is likely to be he was busy building buildings, flying around in helicopters and signing autographs and didn’t have time for the minutiae of appraisals and submitting forms to banks. He left that to his accountants and his lawyers.He’s also likely to say that there were disclaimers in the financial statements that effectively make them meaningless.And, of course, you will hear his assets aren’t just worth a lot; many of them are priceless.Trump was testy when Justice Engoron called him to the stand before issuing a gag order during the first week of the trial. How snappish will Trump be today?We have no reason to believe we’re not going to see that side of Donald Trump. We’ve seen it pretty much every time he has come to court.Almost since the trial started, Trump has been attacking the judge’s law clerk. He thinks she is a biased Democratic Party operative. The judge hit him with a gag order for doing this, and he has been fined twice for violating it. Last week, Trump’s lawyers again attacked the law clerk, prompting the judge to issue a gag order barring them from making public statements about his communications with his staff. Team Trump could well continue their attacks, and I will be watching for that.Doesn’t that risk angering the judge and overshadowing the actual case?It does, and that may well be the point. On Friday, the debate about the law clerk overshadowed Eric Trump’s testimony. It plays well with the former president’s primary audience, his supporters.What about the banks that the financial statements were submitted to?He’ll say that the banks should have read the disclaimers, and anyway, they do their own due diligence.Another point he’s probably going to make — and this is not unpersuasive to a larger audience, I would think — is there were no victims here. It’s not required that there be victims in this case, but all the loans at issue were performing loans, so the banks got paid.To be sure, there’s an argument they would have gotten more money because the interest rates they charged would have been higher if he hadn’t submitted false documents. But he’ll claim that there’s no harm, no foul.In our reporting since 2016, we have looked at different types of asset manipulation that he engaged in for financial gain. He got away with it for decades, whether submitting statements of financial condition to banks to get loans, or inflating his assets for magazines, or making his assets look less valuable when it came to certain dealings with the Internal Revenue Service.How will the questioning differ from the questioning of Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. last week?One thing that will separate his testimony from his sons’ time on the witness stand is that Donald Trump doesn’t use email — we haven’t seen any emails from him in evidence. Anything that references the former president will come in emails or notes from someone else who is referring to him. Or from his signature on documents, but that is not as powerful as email.What was persuasive about the attorney general’s direct examination of Eric Trump last week was lawyers for the attorney general put email after email after email up on the screen and questioned him about this appraisal of this property and that appraisal of that property. The repetitive nature of the questioning made a strong impression and undermined Eric Trump’s claims that he wasn’t involved in the minutia of the business and the valuations at the heart of this case.Do you expect Trump to follow the path laid out by his lawyer, who said earlier in the trial that a statement of value is an estimate, not an absolute?Arriving at a valuation is an art, not a science, but you can’t take it to an extreme.The attorney general is not just saying there was a huge range. The evidence isn’t just “Oh, he inflated his numbers a bit.” There is evidence the inputs that went into the valuations were faulty. Things like: Did the Trump Organization have comparables that were actually comparable?For example, in putting a value of an apartment with a view of Central Park, did they compare it to a smaller apartment blocks away with no view, or to a comparable apartment nearby?What will Trump say if he’s questioned about Michael Cohen’s testimony that Trump had a net worth figure in mind and wanted Cohen to “reverse engineer” the statements, inflating the numbers to get to that figure?Michael Cohen said Trump didn’t specifically tell him to inflate the numbers. He likened Trump’s actions to a mob boss telling you what he wants without directly telling you. Trump is going to seize on this, if asked, saying he didn’t explicitly order Cohen to do anything.WeatherExpect a mostly sunny day, with temperatures reaching into the high 50s. In the evening, there should be a slight chance of rain and a temperature dip to the low 50s.ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKINGIn effect until Tuesday (Election Day).The latest Metro newsImageCredit…Uli Seit for The New York TimesMarathon SundayTop finishers: Tamirat Tola of Ethiopia won the men’s race, setting a course record by crossing the finish line in 2 hours 4 minutes 58 seconds. In the women’s division, Hellen Obiri of Kenya took the top spot, in nail-biting fashion, with a time of 2:27:23.Wheelchair races: Marcel Hug and Catherine Debrunner, both from Switzerland, won the men’s and women’s wheelchair races.Israel-Hamas: An Israeli athlete skipped a run with his club on Oct. 7 because he was tired from training for the marathon. Two members who went were killed by Hamas.PoliticsBallot-stuffing: After the surfacing of videos that showed suspicious activity at absentee ballot drop boxes, residents of Bridgeport, Conn., are preparing to vote in what may be the most confusing election in the country.Fake donors, real money? The F.B.I. search at the home of Mayor Eric Adams’s fund-raising chief was part of an investigation of possible illegal campaign contributions from the Turkish government and Turkish nationals that were disguised as coming from so-called straw donors.Notable DeathsWilliam E. Pelham Jr.: A child psychologist who challenged how his field approached A.D.H.D. in children, and spent most of his career at SUNY Buffalo, died at 75.Juanita McNeely: A painter who used the language of Expressionism to immortalize moments of her own female experience, died at 87.METROPOLITAN diary‘Green Mansions’ImageDear Diary:It was a summer evening in 1974, and I was on my way to visit my boyfriend, who lived on Ocean Avenue near Avenue J in Brooklyn.I had come from Queens and was reading a paperback novel, “Green Mansions” by William Henry Hudson, while waiting for the M train on an elevated platform.At one point, I took a step, and the book fell out of my hands onto the tracks.Suddenly, a tall young man jumped down, retrieved it, climbed back up and handed it to me with a smile on his face.It’s been almost 50 years, and I am still hoping that he never did anything so dangerous again.— Linda GrebanierIllustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.Stefano Montali and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.James Barron is a Metro reporter and columnist who writes the New York Today newsletter. In 2020 and 2021, he wrote the Coronavirus Update column, part of coverage that won a Pulitzer Prize for public service. He is the author of two books and was the editor of “The New York Times Book of New York.” More about James Barron+Share full article+AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTSite IndexSite Information Navigation© 2023 The New York Times CompanyNYTCoContact UsAccessibilityWork with usAdvertiseT Brand StudioYour Ad ChoicesPrivacy PolicyTerms of ServiceTerms of SaleSite MapCanadaInternationalHelpSubscriptions
