Donald Trump rails against judge, AG as he takes witness stand in NYC fraud trial

NEW YORK — Donald Trump took the stand at his civil fraud trial on Monday, a remarkable moment in U.S. history that saw New York’s legal system contend with a former president hurling hours-long abuse at a state Supreme Court judge and attorney general.

During less than four hours of testimony in a downtown Manhattan courtroom, Trump, who’s now the 2024 Republican presidential frontrunner, started off on a cordial note but turned up the dial until he was in full campaign mode.

He brazenly chided state Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron, sitting just two feet away, and goaded New York Attorney General Tish James as she watched from the front row.

“You know nothing about me, you believe that political hack back there!” Trump addressed Engoron while referring to James. “The fraud is her!”

It hadn’t been an hour since the 77-year-old pol raised his right hand and swore to tell the truth when an infuriated Engoron threatened to expel him from the courtroom, urging his legal team at least four times to wrangle their client like he was a bull gone wild.

“I beseech you to control him if you can,” the judge said. “If you can’t, I will. I will excuse him and draw every negative inference that I can.”

Wearing a navy blue suit and a light blue tie, Trump had a snappy comeback for every question state lawyer Kevin Wallace asked, but he came up short with explanations when confronted with proof of the fraud for which he was found liable before the trial began.

Presented with email evidence, he acknowledged making $126 million from his sale of the Old Post Office hotel in Washington, D.C. — with his grown children raking in $4 million each — bringing the tally of ill-gotten gains James’ office has shown to $307 million.

“Above or around that number,” Trump testified when Wallace asked him to affirm his piece of the 2021 sale.

He answered barely any questions with a simple “yes” or “no,” with Engoron asking him numerous times to directly address the questions during dizzying back-and-forths with Wallace. The judge at one point told the AG lawyer he’d follow his lead as to how much to let Trump “ramble.”

The judge, who’s already found Trump and his crew liable on the top claim of seven, will rule at the end of the trial how much Trump and his co-defendants must pay back for the illegal profits they made and determine whether they committed insurance fraud and a host of offenses related to the underlying conspiracy.

Wallace also introduced evidence showing Trump valued his Mar-a-Lago resort as a private residence after agreeing in writing with a historic trust that he’d never use or develop it as anything other than a private membership club.

And Trump admitted the value was off for his chandelier- and gold-filled Trump Tower triplex on Fifth Ave. He claimed for years his Manhattan apartment was worth $327 million, higher than any apartment in the city has ever sold for.

“You know, I have the roof — we have access to the roof, which is very big,” Trump said. “And that’s why we have a disclaimer clause, in case there’s a mistake.

“There’s a disclaimer clause [so] you don’t have to get sued by the attorney general of New York.”

In public remarks defending himself, Trump has repeatedly referenced a so-called “worthless clause” on the statements he provided to financial institutions as proof he was good for the money when guaranteed billions in loans. He testified Monday, “I probably know banks as well as anybody.”

“If there’s any mistake, the disclaimer clause covers it,” Trump told Wallace at one point, adding of his inherited real estate empire: “People don’t know how good a company I built because people like you try to demean me.”

He carried a copy of the clause in his pocket, at one point theatrically pulling it out and saying he wanted to read it aloud, earning a scolding from the judge.

“No, no, no. We’re not going to hear about the disclaimer clause. If you want to hear about the disclaimer clause, read my opinion again,” Engoron said. “Or for the first time, perhaps.”

“You’re wrong in your opinion!” Trump shot back.

“I think she used this case to try and become governor, and she used it successfully to become attorney general. I think it’s a disgrace that this case is going on,” he raged about James.

Presented with contract after contract outlining his responsibilities and standard requirements in plain terms, he distanced himself from the yearly financial statements that reflected his net worth central to the case, documents central to the AG’s case.

He claimed he was worth “billions of dollars more than the financial statements” and downplayed the paperwork as “nice to see” but “not very important when it comes to borrowing money.”

“I think this case is a disgrace,” Trump testified toward the end of the day, alleging election interference. “We had banks that got their money back … We had no complaints, the only ones complaining are you.”

Last month, Trump stormed out during his former fixer Michael Cohen’s testimony when Engoron refused to throw out the case.

On Oct. 25, Trump took the stand for the first time in the trial, for just three minutes. He heard Engoron reject his explanation for his inflammatory out-of-court commentary about the judge’s principal law clerk, Allison Greenfield, in violation of a gag order. Trump’s been fined $15,000 for breaking it twice.

The case that threatens his real estate empire and the billionaire businessman image he rode to the White House is one in a maelstrom of legal challenges he faces in the year leading to the 2024 presidential election. He faces 91 felonies in four criminal matters and a slew of lawsuits as he’s leading President Joe Biden in polls in key battleground states.

“I think you saw what I had to say today and it was very conclusive,” Trump claimed before leaving the courthouse by a side door. “Everything we did was exactly right.”

In the case now in its sixth week on trial, Engoron has heard testimony about how the senior execs at the Trump Org fudged the numbers to persuade banks to lend them more than they should, brokers to agree to coverage at higher limits and lower premiums, and Forbes to place Trump high on its Rich List.

His pretrial ruling finding Trump and his top execs committed fraud was based solely on evidence they provided and did not dispute. It found he, his adult sons, Eric and Don Jr., and former company lieutenants Allen Weisselberg and Jeffrey McConney routinely inflated Trump’s net worth by as high as $2.2 billion to profit in business deals illegally. If upheld on appeal, Trump stands to lose control of prized properties in his real estate portfolio.

The phony numbers were calculated by McConney and Weisselberg with input from Trump’s kids and certified as accurate by Trump until he became president and placed his eldest son and CFO in charge of his finances, Engoron has heard over the last six weeks.

Trump claimed he had no idea how his lieutenants calculated the numbers, answering, “I think so, I hope so,” when asked if he trusted their methods.

“I would maybe on occasion have some suggestions,” Trump acknowledged during another point in his testimony.

With Trump’s testimony complete, state lawyers are expected to soon rest their case after calling Ivanka Trump as their final witness this Wednesday. Trump’s lawyers said they expect to begin their case next Monday and be finished a week ahead of schedule on Dec. 15.

Trump’s lawyers are expected to call his adult sons first, who in their back-to-back testimony last week pinned the blame on the company’s outside accountants.

James’ lawsuit seeks to bar Trump, his adult sons and top executives from ever again leading a company in New York, from cutting commercial real estate acquisition deals and borrowing money for ventures for five years. She’s also seeking to recover $250 million in ill-gotten gains.

For her part on Monday, James laughed when Trump claimed, “She doesn’t even know what 40 Wall St. is!” — the skyscraper is located next door to her Financial District office, where she and her team deposed Trump twice.

In her debrief to reporters outside the courthouse, the AG said she wouldn’t be bullied and that Trump behaved as she’d expected.

“He rambled, he hurled insults, but we expected that. At the end of the day, the documentary evidence demonstrated that, in fact, he falsely inflated his assets to basically enrich himself and his family,” James said.

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