He couldn’t keep it closed for long.
Former President Donald Trump exploded at his civil fraud trial in Manhattan on Monday, minutes after making a tight-lipped gesture to reporters, accusing the judge who called him a fraudster of setting up a “fraud” himself.
“He called me a fraud and he didn’t know anything about me!” shouted the 2024 GOP presidential front-runner, pointing to Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron.
“The fraud is on the court, not in me.”
Trump’s tirade came around noon, midway through his roughly four-hour testimony in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ $250 million lawsuit, accusing him of inflating his wealth by billions a year to save money in terms of loans and insurance.
“She’s a politician,” Trump shouted, referring to James, who was sitting calmly in the front row of the gallery.
Gesturing furiously with his hands, the real estate mogul accused James of trying to use “this case to become governor” and of using it to obtain her current position.
Donald Trump shouted in court, accusing the judge of fraud and calling the attorney general a “hack.” JUSTIN LANE/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
“The fraud is her!” he said.
Earlier in the day, the judge had scolded Trump, 77, for giving “repetitive” and “unresponsive” answers to simple “yes or no questions” from the attorney general’s lawyers about whether he complied with financial disclosures. annual in the core. of the suit.
“This is not a political demonstration,” Engoron told the former president. “Please just answer the questions, don’t make speeches.”
The judge, who is deciding the case because the type of lawsuit James filed requires a bench trial, at one point yelled at Trump’s lawyers to “control your client.”
“I would beg you to control it if you can. If you can’t, I will,” the exasperated jurist said, before threatening to kick Trump off the witness stand and draw “negative inferences” in his absence.
The outburst came after Judge Arthur Engoron warned that he would throw Trump out of the courtroom if he did not stop giving speeches.REUTERS
Trump testified for the first two hours of the day in an almost hushed voice, a far cry from the bluster he normally displays in public.
During a brief morning recess, after the judge warned him not to discuss his testimony until he was finished, Trump made a tight-lipped gesture to reporters in the hallway.
His rant came just minutes later, as the trial resumed, and Trump’s courtroom decorum began to crumble after Attorney General Kevin Wallace grilled him about the 2014 version of his financial statement.
“People don’t know what a good company I built! You know why? Because people like you try to demean me and hurt me, probably for political reasons,” a visibly agitated Trump said, raising his voice for the first time all day.
Trump began testifying quietly before beginning to point at the judge and accuse him of fraud.REUTERS
He claimed Engoron and James were “trying to hurt him”, before accusing them of “fraud”.
“When you rule that Mar-A-Lago is worth $18 million and they rule that it is worth $25 million, either people are very stupid or there is fraud. The fraud is on the court’s behalf,” she said.
In an explosive decision days before the trial began, Engoron found Trump responsible for some of James’s main fraud allegations, citing a Florida official’s valuation of the Palm Beach golf club at as high as $27 million. dollars, while Trump has claimed it is worth up to $1.5. billion.
Trump’s tax agent was forced to admit to authorities in 2020 that Mar-a-Lago had a market value of just $27 million (not the $517 million claimed in other documents) because Trump labeled the property as a “social club” and not a private residence. , which carried enormous tax benefits, as evidence at trial revealed.
Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, complained that the judge told her to sit down while she stood up and interrupted the questioning to defend her client.
“He said I’m a fraud because I didn’t value my property correctly,” Trump ranted loudly about Engoron. “He is the one who did not value my property correctly.”
Trump also insisted he did a “great job” as president.
After Trump rambled for several straight minutes, Wallace, the lawyer from the attorney general’s office, asked, “Are you done yet?”
“Done,” Trump responded.
The attorney general’s lawsuit could lead to Trump being forced to pay millions and give up control of Midtown’s Trump Tower and his other Big Apple properties.
Attorney General Letitia James predicted before the trial began Monday that Trump would insult and mock.AP
James alleges that from 2011 to 2021, Trump inflated his assets by billions a year in “financial statements” to gain an advantage with banks and insurers.
The real estate mogul acknowledged at times Monday that he helped his accountants compile the returns, which Engoron found in a pretrial ruling to be rife with “persistent fraud.”
“If someone asked me for an opinion, I would give it to them,” he testified, adding, “I think I’ve proven that I know more about real estate than other people.”
But on other occasions he claimed that Deutsche Bank and other financial institutions did not rely on the filings before issuing their loans, despite facing contracts that required Trump’s company to disclose the documents as a condition of obtaining the financing.
“It just wasn’t very important, you’ve made it very important,” Trump joked to Wallace.
Trump went on a two-minute tirade outside the courtroom after the day’s trial concluded, telling reporters that the case should be “immediately dismissed.”
“The fraud was on behalf of the court. The court was the fraudster in this case,” he said.
“Everything we did was absolutely fine,” Trump continued.
“I think it’s a very sad day for America,” he said, “but either way, this is a case that should never have been brought.”
In her own statements outside court, James was calm and objective in describing Trump’s antics, telling reporters: “He rambled, he threw insults, but we expected that.
“At the end of the day, the documentary evidence demonstrates that he did, in fact, falsely inflate his assets to basically enrich himself and his family,” he said, adding that Trump “persistently engaged in fraud.”
The trial will resume Wednesday morning with Trump’s daughter Ivanka on the stand as the attorney general’s final witness.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn