Former President Donald Trump was in court for his New York civil fraud trial on Thursday where an accounting expert is expected to bolster the defense argument that company valuations are a highly subjective process.
Trump cast the trial as “corrupt” in brief comments to reporters before entering the courtroom, criticizing the judge presiding over the trial, Arthur Engoron, and New York attorney general Letitia James, who brought the case against him.
“We did absolutely nothing wrong,” the former president said.
Trump also praised defense accounting expert Eli Bartov, who is testifying Thursday and potentially Friday. A professor of accounting at New York University’s Stern School of Business, Bartov is expected to say that accounting standards offer wide latitude for valuation calculation methods used on personal financial statements.
The high-stakes civil case strikes at the heart of Trump’s brand – his real estate empire. New York Attorney General Letitia James is suing Trump for $250 million and seeking to bar him from doing business in the state.
Judge Engoron has already ruled that Trump and his co-defendants were liable for fraud.
The thrust of the Trump defense is that the financial statements were not misleading and that different people can come up with different values for the same property.
The defense has argued that there was no intent to defraud banks or insurers, in part because the Trump family relied on accountants, and that any differences in values on the properties were not meaningful.
But in September, before the trial began, Engoron ruled that the Trumps engaged in “persistent and repeated fraud” by inflating the value of assets on the financial statements.The state is attempting to prove six other claims, including conspiracy, falsifying business records, issuing false financial…
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