Donald Trump Defends His Properties' Valuations As Witness In Fraud Trial
Former President Donald Trump took the stand in a Manhattan courtroom Monday morning to defend the way his real estate firm has valued its properties over the years.
The former president’s courtroom appearance is the latest stage in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ fraud lawsuit, which alleges that The Trump Organization inflated property values to secure favorable loan terms while simultaneously positioning properties as less valuable in order to reduce property taxes.
Judge Arthur Engoron, who is overseeing the case, has already ruled that Trump committed “persistent and repeated” fraud. The purpose of the trial is to decide whether Trump is also guilty of six other charges — which include conspiracy to commit insurance fraud, falsify business records and financial statements — as well as to determine the extent of a possible penalty.
On the stand Monday morning, Trump said that he believed some of the property valuations at issue were high — notably, his 11K SF apartment that some of his company's financial statements represented as 30K SF and worth $300M, according to CNN and NBC News.
Trump leaned on disclaimer clauses in response, saying there could have "been a mistake" regarding the Trump Tower triplex's value. The assets would have been valued higher had brand value been included, Trump said — although generally accepted accounting principles don't allow for the inclusion of brand value.
The prosecution also scrutinized the valuations of other Trump Organization properties, including its Aberdeen golf course in Scotland and the Seven Springs estate in Westchester County. Trump told the court that he lowered the value of Seven Springs because he thought it was too high, The New York Times reported.
Other values, he said, were low, such as Mar-A-Lago, which Trump claimed is worth between $1B and $1.5B in spite of an $18M property value appraisal. He also said that he believed that the firm's 40 Wall Street tower was “very underestimated,” according to CNN.
Trump also acknowledged claims made by his former attorney Michael Cohen in the trial regarding his personal attempts to influence property valuations. Within the first 30 minutes of Monday's hearing, Trump said that he would look at financial statements and make suggestions.
“I would look at them, I would see them, and I would maybe on occasion have some suggestions,” he said, according to CNN.
Earlier during the trial, Cohen testified that Trump ordered him to make asset values line up with “whatever number Trump told us to,” ABC7 reported.
Last February, Trump's accounting firm, Mazars USA, said it would no longer work with the former president and could no longer stand by the statements of financial condition it filed for The Trump Organization between 2011 and 2020.
In court on Monday morning, Trump directed the blame for any discrepancies at Mazars, saying that if the accounting firm “had a problem with it, they wouldn’t have done the statement.”
He also said that he directed staff at The Trump Organization to provide Mazars with the information, although former Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg and former executive Jeff McConney were the most frequent recipients of those instructions.
The court broke for lunch at 12:50 p.m. ET, with the former president’s questioning resuming in the afternoon.
During previous weeks of the trial, an appraiser named by The Trump Organization as responsible for determining property values testified that he hadn't worked on appraisals. Engoron also issued a decision revoking business licenses for The Trump Organization, although an appeals court placed a temporary hold on the order.
The trial is expected to continue through mid-December. James’ office is asking Engoron for fines of $250M and a permanent ban on Trump and his eldest children from doing business in New York.
