2024-01-11 19:06:45
The ex-president Donald Trump He reiterated his innocence this Thursday on the last day of the trial against him in New York, after the judge presiding over the case, Arthur Engoron, allowed him to speak despite having said the day before that he forbade it.
After a brief 15-minute recess in this session of closing arguments, Trump’s lawyers again asked the judge to allow their client to speak.
After this request, the judge – surprisingly – agreed, but not before warning the former president that It should be limited to the topic being judged.
“I am innocent,” Trump said from the microphone at the table where he sits with his lawyers, after which he reiterated his attacks against the state attorney general, Letitia James.
Let us remember that this was the person who originally filed the fraud charges against him, his two oldest children and two other officials of the Trump Organization.
“There is not a single witness against us,” Trump said, without getting up from his chair.
After this he reiterated that it is “of a witch hunt”, argument that his lawyer had already used at the beginning of the process Christopher Kiss, that throughout the process he attacked prosecutor James alleging that she has not presented evidence against her client.
“What happened here, sir, is a fraud for me,” Trump insisted, and argued political reasons for this: “They want to make sure he doesn’t win again and this is partly election interference.”
Fraud trial against former President Donald Trump
During the first part of the hearing, Kise argued that no financial institution has issued a report of “misconduct, suspicious or fraudulent activity” against his client and that there are no victims of the alleged fraud.
“Instead of praising President Trump as a successful businessman, we have an attorney general going after him,” Kise said to a packed room of spectators, so a second room had to be set up for journalists.
The judge already considered all the defendants responsible for fraud, the main charge, in a ruling prior to the trial.
Kise, who praised his client, questioned the amount that the State Attorney’s Office says Trump and the other defendants must pay in fines for the alleged fraud.
The Prosecutor’s Office had initially requested 250 million but a week ago claimed 370 million, arguing that Trump should pay more because it has been proven in the trial that he obtained illicit profits, a figure that according to Kise is pure “speculation.”
Prosecutor James already scored a first victory before the trial began, when Engoron summarily ruled that Trump and the other defendants were responsible for continued fraud at the Trump Organization.
After this, he issued an order to cancel their business licenses, which they have tried to stop, claiming that it is not clear enough.
Concluding his arguments before the day’s first recess, Kise told Engoron: “This decision is not just about President Trump: What you do, Mr. Justice, impacts every corporation in New York.”
The former president faces, in addition to the fine, a lifetime ban in the state’s real estate sector.
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