Donald Trump’s lawyers rested his defense Tuesday and sought anew to immediately end the New York civil fraud trial that threatens the former president’s real estate empire. The judge said “there’s no way I’m going to grant that.”
Trump’s lawyers — thwarted in a similar bid last month — were swatted down as they asked Judge Arthur Engoron to cut the trial short and issue a verdict clearing Trump, his company and top executives of wrongdoing. The judge reiterated his feeling that state lawyers had met their legal burden for seeing the three-month trial through to its conclusion.
New York Attorney General Letitia James alleges Trump duped banks, insurers and others by inflating his wealth on financial statements used in securing loans and make deals. Engoron has already ruled on James’ top claim that Trump committed fraud.
Trump’s lawyers renewed their request for what’s known as a directed verdict a day after Trump, the leading contender for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, skipped a planned return to the witness stand as the defense’s last big witness.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
New York Attorney General Letitia James alleges Trump duped banks, insurers and others by inflating his wealth on financial statements used in securing loans and make deals.
A few weeks later, Engoron rejected the defense’s request for a mistrial, denying its claims that he was politically biased and had irreparably harmed Trump’s right to a fair trial through “astonishing departures from ordinary standards of impartiality.”
In cross-examining Bartov, state lawyer Louis Solomon sought to undermine the contention that major Trump lender Deutsche Bank didn’t rely on his financial statements.
Solomon noted that retired Deutsche Bank executive Nicholas Haigh had testified that he believed such cuts were “standardized” for client-reported commercial real estate values.
He opined that the bank would have scrutinized enough of Trump’s assets to be satisfied he had the wherewithal to warrant the loan, and then, to save staff work but still be conservative, bankers would have applied a standard deduction to the remaining holdings.
In the same courthouse, Bartov once testified as an expert witness for the attorney general’s office in its lawsuit accusing Exxon Mobil of duping investors about the toll that climate change regulations could take on its business.
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