It’s a short week in the civil fraud case because of the holiday, but yesterday Trump’s former comptroller, Jeffrey McConney, was back on the stand to discuss his work for the company. He said he was proud of that work and when asked why he had finally decided to quit, he broke down on the stand.

Jeffrey McConney was on the witness stand for a fourth day in six weeks at the ex-president’s civil fraud trial when defense lawyer Jesus M. Suarez asked why McConney no longer works at the Trump Organization.

McConney paused, took off his glasses, raised his hands in the air, wiped his eyes with tissues that were brought to him and started reflecting aloud about his more than 35 years at the company…

“I just wanted to relax and stop being accused of misrepresenting assets for the company that I loved working for. I’m sorry,” he testified Tuesday, his voice trembling.

McConney isn’t just a witness in the case, he’s a defendant, accused of helping the organization inflate the valuations of various properties to secure bank loans. Last year he admitted in a criminal trial that he had helped other executives at the company avoid taxes.

One of Donald Trump’s top moneymen admitted Thursday to breaking the law to help fellow Trump Organization executives avoid taxes on company-paid apartments and other perks, including by preparing misleading tax returns and failing to report the benefits to tax authorities.

Senior Vice President and Controller Jeffrey McConney testified at the company’s criminal tax fraud trial that he filed false tax returns on behalf of a father-son executive duo whose Manhattan apartment rents were paid by the Trump Organization.

Monday, McConney testified that property valuations were looked over by him and then went to the company CFO Allen Weisselberg and from there on to an outside accounting firm called Mazars USA. Notably left out of this process was Donald Trump. But Tuesday McConney was cross examined shortly after his break down on the stand. He was asked about a handwritten note that appeared on one of the exhibits.

McConney was handed People’s Exhibit 3054, a draft of Trump’s net-worth statement for 2014. He was asked to look at a note scribbled in thin blue ink on the draft’s first page, “DJT TO GET FINAL REVIEW,” which he said he’d written.

Trump has denied involvement in preparing a decade’s worth of these annual net-worth statements, which New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, has alleged — and the trial judge has agreed — were each year riddled with billions of dollars of exaggerations…

“Donald Trump would get final review?” Andrew Amer, the state’s lawyer, asked McConney.

“That was my understanding, yes,” McConney answered from the witness stand, his voice gruff.

Trump had been asked about this same note during his deposition and claimed he didn’t know who wrote it. Now McConney has confirmed this was his note so there’s really no possibility of a misunderstanding here. Trump’s comptroller wrote that Trump himself would get the final review. And of course it makes sense that Trump would get the final review of something like this. This note just confirms that was the way it worked. McConney went on to testify that is how it worked every year until 2017 when Trump headed to the White House.

So McConney has just identified Trump as the person with final approval for all of these documents, which undermines the claim that Trump wasn’t really involved and that any mistakes in these valuations were the responsibility of the outside accounting firm. This testimony could play into the judge’s determination of Trump’s liability and that of his sons who took over the job of doing those final reviews in 2017.

This is a civil trial not a criminal one so nobody will be going to jail but Trump could be hit with fines totaling almost $300 million and lose his ability to operate any business in New York state going forward. Those are pretty big stakes for someone whose name is synonymous with big New York real estate deals.