Former President Donald Trump is on trial in New York in a $250 million lawsuit that could upset the personal fortune and real estate empire that helped propel Trump to the White House.
Trump, his sons Eric and Don Jr. and Trump Organization executives are accused through New York Attorney General Letitia James of participating in a decade-long scheme in which they used “numerous acts of fraud and misrepresentation” to inflate Trump’s network in order to offload higher loan terms. The former president has denied any wrongdoing, and his lawyers have argued that Trump’s allegedly inflated valuations were a product of his business skills.
Donald Trump’s former lawyer and self-proclaimed “fixer” will be the second witness to testify in the trial.
Bill Kelly, an attorney for Trump’s former accounting firm, Mazars USA, is expected to begin his testimony this morning.
Mazars released Trump’s remarks on the currency scenario before breaking business with the Trump Organization last year and retracting statements issued between 2011 and 2020.
“We reached this conclusion based, in part, on documents filed through the New York Attorney General on January 18, 2022, our own investigation, and obtained from internal and external sources,” Kelly wrote in a 2022 letter to Trump. Organization.
Trump’s defense attorneys, Chris Kise, Robert Clifford and Michael Farina, appealed Judge Arthur Engoron’s ruling to sanction and fine them for making frivolous arguments before trial.
On the eve of the trial, Engoron sanctioned the lawyers for their “continuation of false arguments” and sentenced each of them to pay a $7,500 fine.
“Sanctions are the way to make defendants’ attorneys perceive the consequences of engaging in repetitive and frivolous motions before this Court,” Engoron wrote in his ruling at the time.
In their filing, the attorneys asked an appeals court whether Engoron “made errors of law and/or fact, abused its discretion, and/or acted beyond its jurisdiction. “
Former President Trump’s civil fraud trial has been postponed until Tuesday due to exposure to COVID-19, New York’s attorney general announced.
The government did say who had been reported or when.
Trump attended the trial on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week and said Wednesday that he would possibly return to court to hear testimony from his former lawyer Michael Cohen, which could also begin tomorrow.
The trial is expected to continue in the morning with testimony from a lawyer from Trump’s former accounting firm, Mazars USA, followed by Cohen.
The third week of the trial ended Friday when Judge Engoron fined Trump $5,000 for violating a gag order issued through the ruling on banning social media posts and statements about the staff ruling.
While Engoron deemed Trump’s violation “inadvertent,” he threatened additional fines, or even prison time, if Trump violated the order again.
Judge Engoron fined Donald Trump $5,000 for what he called Trump’s “inadvertent” violation of his limited gag order, which occurred when the former president’s fake Truth Social post about the Engoron employee was not removed from the Trump campaign’s website.
“Donald Trump has received many warnings from this court about the potential repercussions of violating the gag order,” Engoron wrote in a ruling released at the end of the day’s hearings. “He, in particular, stated that he understood it and would abide by it. through it. As a result, issuing a new warning is no longer appropriate; this Court has gone far beyond the “warning” stage.
The sentence ruled that it would impose a nominal fine of $5,000 “given the defendant’s position that the violation was unintentional. “
However, the ruling wrote: “Make no mistake: long-term violations, whether intentional or unintentional, will subject the offender to much harsher penalties, possibly including, but not limited to, harsher monetary penalties, convicting Donald Trump of contempt of court, and in all likelihood jailing him pursuant to New York Judiciary Law 753.
The 14th day of the proceedings begins following a motion filed Thursday night through Ivanka Trump to quash three subpoenas that would compel her to testify at trial.
Donald Trump’s eldest daughter, who left the Trump Organization in 2016, was ignored in the civil lawsuit before an appeals court in June.
But New York’s attorney general still plans to call her as a witness in the state case. In early September, the attorney general sent subpoenas to three Ivanka Trump affiliates to compel her to testify in person.
“The NYAG, which has never challenged Ms. Trump, seeks to compel her to return to this case that was dismissed by a unanimous resolution of the First Department Appellate Division,” Ivanka Trump’s attorney, Bennet Moskowitz, wrote in his filing Thursday. . .
Moskowitz argued that the subpoenas should be dismissed because they were not properly served and because the attorney general does not have jurisdiction to compel Ivanka Trump, who is no longer a New York resident, to testify.
“The NYAG does this, which is why it has subpoenaed three corporations to circumvent its failure to follow up on Ms. Trump’s statement when it had the opportunity to do so,” the document reads.
In a Thursday email attached to the motion, an attorney for the attorney general’s office said he does not intend to ask Judge Arthur Engoron to hold Ivanka Trump in contempt. Instead, they plan to register a motion today to force her to appear in court. , according to the email.