Donald Trump spent seven hours in April sitting for a deposition in the office of New York D.A. Letitia James. James released the deposition transcript Wednesday. The deposition is 479 pages.
The D.A. released the transcript among a flurry of court filings ahead of a September 22 hearing when a judge could resolve part or all of the lawsuit before it goes to trial in October. James is adamant that the evidence is there that Trump fraudulently inflated his net worth by up to 39%, or more than $2B, in some years. Trump’s response was that she doesn’t have a case and she should drop the case now. He said it’s a shame he has to justify himself to her, given all the contributions he has made to the city and its skyline.
Furthermore, Trump said it didn’t matter if his financial disclosures are accurate or not. Legally speaking, he said, there is a clause in the financial statements for that.
“I have a clause in there that says, ‘Don’t believe the statement. Go out and do your own work.’ This statement is ‘worthless.’ It means nothing,” Trump testified. Given the disclaimer, he said, “you’re supposed to pay no credence to what we say whatsoever.”
Keep in mind, these are financial statements Trump gave to banks to secure loans or whatever in his business dealings. Do everyday business people present financial statements with a clause that says to pay “no credence” to what it says? It’s just something put on paper to satisfy a request from a bank. Really? Granted, I’m not presenting financial documents to banks for million dollar projects but that just sounds odd. Why would financial institutions willingly be duped with numbers they are being told may or may not be real? If that clause is there and relevant, it would certainly be a very Trumpy thing to do.
Trump told James it was a “terrible thing” she was doing, suing him over annual financial statements detailing his net worth and the value of his assets like skyscrapers and golf courses. James filed a lawsuit that seeks $250M in penalties and a ban on Trump doing business in New York. She claims he inflated the value of his assets, like Mar-a-Lago, for more than a decade.
The former president testified that he had the financial statements drawn up so he could see a list of his properties. He didn’t think financial institutions would take them seriously but sometimes they asked for the statements. He called some of the listed values as “guesstimates.”
No one knows how much Trump is really worth. Maybe not even Trump. Is he a multi-millionaire or is he a billionaire? That’s the question that James is trying to answer.
Trump testified in April that his company, the Trump Organization, has over $400 million in cash. He claimed Mar-a-Lago is worth $1.5 billion and a golf course he owns near Miami is worth $2 billion or $2.5 billion. He said he believes he could sell another golf course he owns in Scotland to the Saudi-backed LIV golf league “for a fortune.”
“Do you know the banks were fully paid? Do you know the banks made a lot of money?” Trump testified. “Do you know I don’t believe I ever got even a default notice, and even during COVID, the banks were all paid? And yet you’re suing on behalf of banks, I guess. It’s crazy. The whole case is crazy.”
To be clear, this is a civil fraud case, not a criminal case, against Trump and his company. People involved in Trump’s business dealings aren’t lodging complaints and, as he said, the banks were all paid without problems. James ran for her office using a promise to prosecute Donald Trump as a part of her campaign platform. This is a political prosecution. It’s a “get Trump” kind of case.
Though the case delves into the inner workings of Trump’s family business, Trump answered questions with “meandering non sequiturs, political digressions and self-aggrandizing defenses” according to The New York Times.
But as lawyers from the office grilled Mr. Trump on the inner-workings of his family business, which is accused of inflating his net worth by billions of dollars, he responded with a series of meandering non sequiturs, political digressions and self-aggrandizing defenses.
Asked about his authority at the Trump Organization while he was in the White House, Mr. Trump responded that he considered the presidency “the most important job in the world, saving millions of lives.”
“I think you would have nuclear holocaust, if I didn’t deal with North Korea,” he explained, and then added: “And I think you might have a nuclear war now, if you want to know the truth.”
Well, that took a twist. He went from financial disclosures to nuclear war. He said that he wasn’t very involved in Trump family business, that Eric Trump took over when he became president.
The former president was asked by Kevin Wallace, a senior lawyer in Ms. James’s office, about his relationship to his company. He said that he was not the final decision maker, though he later suggested he might be involved in “something major, final decisions, whatever.”
KEVIN WALLACE: Mr. Trump, are you currently the person with ultimate decision-making authority for the Trump Organization?
DONALD J. TRUMP: No.
MR. WALLACE: Who would that be?
MR. TRUMP: My son Eric is much more involved with it than I am. I’ve been doing other things.
In the April deposition, Trump is described as very talkative, as opposed to how he dealt with the previous deposition last year. In that deposition, he invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 400 times.
Trump is not expected to testify if this case goes to court. Video recordings of his deposition can be played at trial.
D.A. James asked Judge Arthur Engoron to decide the case without a trial. She said there is plenty of proof that Trump and his company defrauded lenders, insurers, and others. Engoron only needs to answer two questions, she argued, in order to rule on the case. He needs to rule on whether Trump’s annual financial statements were false or misleading, and whether he and his company used those statements while conducting business transactions. “The answer to both questions is a resounding ‘yes’ based on the mountain of undisputed evidence,” James’ special litigation counsel Andrew Amer said in a 100-page motion.
Trump’s lawyers ask that Engoron dismiss the lawsuit. They said the statue of limitations has passed for many of the allegations. Also, they said that James has no standing to sue because the entities Trump allegedly defrauded “have never complained, and indeed have profited from their business dealings” with him.
It truly looks like this is all politics. James likes her job and wants to keep it. Perhaps she has visions of higher office. She is keeping a campaign promise to prosecute Trump but there doesn’t seem to be any “there” there. If the financial institutions don’t have a problem with how Trump represents his assets, why does she? This looks like a lawsuit looking for a grievance. James knows it. Why do you think she doesn’t want to take the case to court? She wants her political stunt settled out of court so she isn’t exposed for the partisan hack she is in office.
