Donald Trump entered politics after making his fortune in business: on Monday, the one who hopes to lead the United States again will be heard during a high-risk civil trial in New York, accused of having inflated his fortune in a colossal way to attract the banks.
“Puffed up” according to his son Eric, the former president of the United States, 77, must sit at 10 a.m. Monday to the left of his judge, Arthur Engoron, another septuagenarian with whom he maintains execrable relations since the opening of the debates on October 2.
Like the four criminal cases in which he is indicted and risks prison sentences, Donald Trump has continued to attack the magistrate, a “thug”, “disturbed”, “hateful”, who would do “the dirty job” of the Democrats.
For his part, the judge reprimanded him, then punished him with two fines, US$5,000 then US$10,000, for having implicated his clerk.
Donald Trump will be questioned by the New York State Attorney General’s Office during this civil trial without a jury, in which his two children Donald Jr and Eric, executive vice-presidents of the Trump Organization, a myriad of companies, are also being prosecuted. manager of residential and office skyscrapers, luxury hotels, residences and golf courses throughout the world.
During his first testimony as part of the investigation, on August 10, 2022, he denounced, in the preamble, “the biggest witch hunt in the history of our country”, carried out in his eyes by the attorney general of New York State Letitia James before remaining silent.
The trial is only one of the first legal tests awaiting Donald Trump on the road to the Republican primaries and the presidential election, which he hopes to win to return to the White House.
He is notably expected in March 2024 before federal justice in Washington, accused of conspiring to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election.
For the moment, his indictments have not harmed his dominance over his Republican competitors in the polls. Sunday, one year to the day before the presidential election, a poll New York Times/Siena College also gave him a winner against Joe Biden in five out of six key states: Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
“Repeated frauds”
The civil trial is off to a bad start: even before its opening, the judge considered that the New York State Attorney General’s Office presented “conclusive evidence that, between 2014 and 2021, the defendants had overvalued the assets” of the group of “812 million [à] $2.2 billion” depending on the year, in Donald Trump’s annual financial statements.
As a result of “repeated fraud,” he ordered the liquidation of companies managing these assets, such as the Trump Tower and 40 Wall Street skyscrapers in New York, or the opulent Seven Springs residence in a bucolic corner of his suburbs. In other words, Donald Trump would simply lose control of part of his real estate empire.
The decision was suspended on appeal, but it gives an idea of the stakes of the case for the Republican billionaire.
Donald Trump regularly came to hearings in New York, transforming each of his passages in the corridors of the court into media rituals, railing against the judge and the attorney general, an African-American and Democratic elected official, whom he describes as “racist” and “corrupt”. Or repeating that his residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, is worth 50 to 100 times more than the court’s assessments (from 17 to 28 million US dollars), which take into account the restrictions on the use of the site, because it is a private club, which diminishes its value.