(New York) Donald Trump has always associated his children with his business and his political career: three of them and the Republican billionaire himself are expected from Wednesday on the witness stand in New York, at the civil trial for financial fraud which threatens his real estate empire.
If all goes as planned, Donald Trump Jr, 45, must be questioned during the day on Wednesday, the hearing having started with other testimonies.
The parade of the family clan is to continue Thursday with Eric Trump, 39 years old.
Both executive vice-presidents of the Trump Organization, which brings together a myriad of companies managing residential and office skyscrapers, luxury hotels and golf courses around the world, they are accused like their father by the Attorney General of New York State Letitia James for inflating the group’s assets to the tune of billions of dollars to obtain better loans from banks and more favorable insurance conditions.
“Leave my children alone, Engoron. You are a disgrace to the judicial profession,” Donald Trump Sr. published overnight on his social network Truth Social, regarding Judge Arthur Engoron who is presiding over the proceedings. He also accused him, in a series of virulent messages that he is accustomed to, of being “crazy, totally unbalanced and dangerous”, and of “doing the dirty work of the Democratic Party”.
Since the start of the trial on October 2, the magistrate has already issued two fines of $5,000 and $10,000 to Donald Trump, settled since then, for attacking his clerk.
If the agenda is not disrupted, the former president of the United States, aged 77, will be questioned on Monday, one year less a day before the presidential election of November 5, 2024, which he hopes to contest to return to the head of the United States.
PHOTO SCOTT MORGAN, REUTERS ARCHIVES
If he does not risk prison time, the trial could cause Donald Trump to lose control of part of his real estate assets, in addition to a fine of 250 million dollars and the ban on managing companies to New York.
Will follow, two days later, Ivanka Trump, who left the Trump Organization in 2017 to enter the White House as advisor to the 45e President of the United States. She is not the subject of the proceedings.
“Repeated frauds”
Long-time associates of the family business, Donald Jr. and Eric Trump took charge of the Trump Organization when their father entered the White House.
They are also fervent political allies of the former American president, an unfailing loyalty that they display daily in the media and on social networks.
They should not deviate from the line adopted by the defense since the start of the trial a month ago.
The lawyers argue that valuations of the group’s assets, such as Trump Tower and the 40 Wall Street building, were subjective but sincere, and that the banks did not lose a dollar by lending money to the Trump Organization. For his part, Donald Trump shells an “unjust” trial, led by a “corrupt” prosecutor, Letitia James, and a “rogue” judge, Arthur Engoron, in the pay of the Democrats to prevent him from returning to the White House .
Regularly present at the hearings, the poll favorite for the Republican primaries has transformed each of his visits to the corridors of the court into a mini-press conference and poses as the victim of a legal machination, as in the four other cases in which he is criminally charged, including for attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
His presence at the hearings also demonstrates the importance that Donald Trump attaches to the matter. If he does not risk prison time, the trial could cause him to lose control of part of his real estate assets, in addition to a fine of 250 million dollars and the ban on managing companies in New York .
Even before the trial opened on October 2, Judge Engoron estimated that the general prosecutor’s office presented “conclusive evidence that between 2014 and 2021, the defendants overvalued the assets” by “812 million (to) 2.2 billion dollars” depending on the year.
As a result of “repeated fraud”, he ordered the liquidation of the companies, a real legal bombshell, but his decision was suspended on appeal.
The trial also concerns other violations of financial laws and the amount of the fine.