And what was supposed to happen happened. Called to testify Monday in the civil trial for fraud which affects his real estate empire in the state of New York, former American President Donald Trump finally showed himself equal to himself before Judge Arthur Engoron: He He did not respect the rules of procedure, he took advantage of his speaking time to talk a lot about himself and he exposed some alternative realities while hoping that his interlocutors would accept them without question. Selected pieces.
Recall the order
Less than an hour after taking his place in the witness box, the populist and first former American president to find himself in such a situation since Theodore Roosevelt in 1915 in a case where he was accused of slander, was rebuffed by the judge.
“Can you control your client,” Mr. Engoron asked the ex-president’s lawyer, Chris Kise, after repeatedly suggesting to the lawyer to “talk” with Donald Trump to force him to comply with the court rules. Throughout his testimony, the judge showed himself exasperated by the witness’s attempts not to answer the questions and to take tortuous paths to do so, to take advantage of his platform to denounce the judicial harassment of which he claims victim for months. “This affair is a shame,” the ex-president said in the afternoon while denouncing “electoral interference” since “you want to keep them in this court all day.”
“This is not a political rally. It’s a courtroom,” the judge reminded him earlier in the day, according to comments reported by several American media present on site.
Donald Trump’s lawyer cleverly brought politics into the court by speaking of his client as “the former and soon to be next commander in chief” of the United States, just to remind everyone and the Court that the accused and witness in this case is currently campaigning for the next presidential election.
A status which allows him to understand “the rules of the courtroom”, said the Republican’s lawyer in substance. “He does not need additional instructions” to comply. “Perhaps, but he does not respect them,” said the judge.
Me, myself and me
“Out of place!” Off topic! Answer the question. » Repeated in different forms, this sentence summarizes the trajectory given by Donald Trump to his testimony Monday morning, he, who did not miss an opportunity to boast of his career, his empire and his property when called upon to explain to the court the value of its properties.
Remember that the overvaluation of his assets is at the heart of this fraud trial. At the end of September, New York justice confirmed that the real estate mogul’s empire had indeed been built over several decades of “widespread fraud” and ordered the cancellation of the business licenses of Donald Trump and his children in the state. This decision threatens to collapse the ex-president’s empire, as does the image that contributed to his incredible rise from the pages of the tabloids to the White House.
Asked about the value of her golf course located in Aberdeen, Scotland, the former reality TV star took a step aside to refer to the place as an “artistic expression” and the “greatest golf course never built,” he said. On the value of Mar-a-Lago, his Florida residence, he preferred to speak of “beauty” and “success”. On a deficit recorded in 2013 by his building at 40 Wall Street, Trump never responded, preferring to denounce the attitude of justice towards him which seeks to take away his wealth like “they do in communist China”, said -he said.
In the first minutes of his testimony, the former president also defended himself from accusations relating to the inflating of his assets in his financial statements to profit from banks and insurance companies, arguing that the value of its name and brand alone was an “asset”. “If I wanted to build a financial statement, I only had to increase the value of my brand by $10 million.” And added: “I became president thanks to my brand. I sell books at incredible levels through my brand. »
Alternate reality
Strange moment: When Kevin Wallace, the lawyer representing the New York attorney general’s office, asked Donald Trump if he had reviewed a financial document related to his empire’s 2021 real estate valuation and participated in the preparation in a press release on the matter that year, the latter replied that he had not seen it because “so busy at the White House,” he said.
“I was too focused on China, Russia and the security of our country,” he said in court.
Kevin Wallace reminded him that he was not president in 2021. Donald Trump left the White House on January 20, after losing the election in November 2020.
On Wednesday, his daughter, Ivanka Trump, must succeed him in the witness box, after the notable appearances of his two sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump last week, key people in the organization chart of the Trump Organization.