2024-01-11 18:51:02
Donald Trump returned Thursday for the final stretch of his civil trial in New York for financial fraud, obliged however to let his lawyers plead his defense in the courtroom, even if he once more denounced in the corridors “electoral interference” in the middle of the campaign for the 2024 presidential election.
The former tenant of the White House, who dreams of returning there, is accused with his sons Eric and Donald Jr of having colossally inflated during the 2010s the value of skyscrapers, luxury hotels or golf courses in heart of their empire, the Trump Organization, to obtain more favorable loans from banks and better insurance conditions.
New York State Attorney General Letitia James, who filed a civil complaint in the fall of 2022 for financial fraud, is seeking US$370 million in compensation.
A “witch hunt”
Since the trial began on October 2, the 77-year-old billionaire and tribune has railed once morest justice at each of his appearances in the courtroom or in the corridors of the Manhattan courthouse, denouncing a political witch hunt or a trial worthy of a banana republic.
Returning to the civil court on Thursday, he once once more thundered in front of the press once morest political interference, electoral interference at the highest level and a very unfair trial. For three months, the Trump clan’s lawyers have deemed the case legally empty.
One of them, Chris Kise, admitted Thursday to possible unintentional errors in Mr. Trump’s financial declarations, without it being necessary to conclude that there was fraud.
But the favorite of the Republican Party primaries which open on January 15 in Iowa wanted to ensure his own defense. Me Kise thus wrote to court judge Arthur Engoron at the beginning of January to inform him of the wishes of his eminent client.
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Judge Arthur F. Engoron has presided over the Trump Organization’s civil fraud trial in New York State Supreme Court since it began last November. (Archive photo)
Photo : Archyde.com / BRENDAN MCDERMID
The tension mounts
He didn’t want to risk Mr. Trump delivering a campaign speech in the courtroom.
Me Kise initially tried to have the argument postponed to January 29 by arguing that Donald Trump’s mother-in-law had died on Tuesday and that he was very close to her.
Request rejected by the judge, who set an ultimatum on Wednesday so that Donald Trump might speak under conditions: Take it or leave it. It’s now or never. You have until noon, in seven minutes. I WILL NOT GIVE ANY ADDITIONAL DELAY.
A quarter of an hour later, the judge ruled: the former president will not speak in court on Thursday.
In a sign of the tense climate, police in Nassau County, on the Long Island peninsula, east of New York, confirmed that Judge Engoron’s home had been the subject of an unfounded threat of alarm. bomb.
In front of the courthouse, under the surveillance of a helicopter, a few demonstrators chanted no dictator in the United States.
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Protesters regularly go to the New York Supreme Court, where Donald Trump and his sons have been on trial for fraud since November. (Archive photo)
Photo : Getty Images / Spencer Platt
At the hearing, Donald Trump violently attacked the judge’s team and the attorney general, and the magistrate imposed two fines totaling US$15,000.
Unlike the criminal trials awaiting him this year, including that for his alleged maneuvers aimed at invalidating the result of the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump does not risk prison in this civil case.
But he plays big.
Billions at stake
Even before the trial, Judge Engoron estimated at the end of September that the prosecution presented conclusive evidence that between 2014 and 2021, the defendants overvalued the group’s assets by 812 million [à] 2.2 billion US dollars depending on the year, in Donald Trump’s financial documents.
As a result of repeated fraud, he ordered the liquidation of companies managing his assets, such as the Trump Tower on 5th Avenue or the 40 Wall Street skyscraper in Manhattan.
Measures however suspended on appeal.
The trial concerns other crimes, such as insurance fraud, and the financial penalties demanded by the New York State Attorney General’s Office, which is now asking for 370 million US dollars, far from the 250 million in the complaint of 2022.
It remains for Judge Engoron to close the proceedings and determine the amount of damage and reparations.
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