NEW YORK – Eric Trump, one of Donald Trump’s two sons tasked with running the family business, swore Thursday that he was never involved with financial statements that New York state officials allege illegally inflated the ex-president’s wealth and the value of the family business.
When presented with a decade-old email requesting information for one of his father’s financial statements, the angry son attempted to clarify.
“We’re a large organization, a massive real estate organization — yes, I believe I understand we have financial statements.” “Without a doubt,” Eric Trump testified during the family’s and company’s civil fraud trial. However, the executive vice president of the Trump Organisation maintained, “I had no involvement and never worked on my father’s statement of financial condition.”
Even though another Trump Organisation executive testified that Eric Trump was on a video conversation concerning his father’s financial statement as recently as 2021, the son said he couldn’t recall it.
“I’m on a thousand calls a day,” he admitted.
On a carefully watched and often turbulent day in the trial, Eric Trump joined their brother and colleague, Trump Organisation Executive Vice President Donald Trump Jr., to the testimony. After defense counsel criticized his legal clerk’s conduct in the case again, Judge Arthur Engoron suggested extending a gag order.
Eric Trump Testifies He Wasn’t Aware Of Dad’s Financial Statements, But Emails Show Some Involvement
Engoron forbade participants in the case from slandering his workers early in the trial after Donald Trump disparaged the clerk on social media. The former president was fined twice, totaling $15,000, for what the judge described as infractions.
Trump’s attorneys have often complained about the clerk passing notes to the judge during evidence, which they believe is inappropriate and unfair to them. Engoron claims an “absolutely unfettered right” to the clerk’s advice.
When the defense objected Thursday again, with Eric Trump calmly looking from the witness box, a sometimes table-pounding Engoron threatened to widen the gag order to include attorneys if anybody mentioned a member of his staff again.
The former president, his adult sons, and other defendants deny wrongdoing in the case that New York Attorney General Letitia James initiated. She accuses them of inflating the ex-president’s net worth on his annual “statement of financial condition” forms, which were distributed to banks, insurers, and others for them to accept loans and do business with him.
“So sad to see my sons being persecuted in a political witch hunt,” the Republican presidential candidate for 2024 posted Thursday on his Truth Social platform. Engoron and James are Democrats.
On Monday, Donald Trump and Ivanka Trump are both scheduled to testify. Late Thursday, an appeals court dismissed her request to postpone her testimony.
Eric Trump will take the stand again on Friday.
An appraiser testified earlier in the trial that the scion took an active interest in determining the worth of the Trump National Golf Club and Seven Springs estate, both in New York’s suburban Westchester County, a decade ago. According to the lawsuit, Donald Trump’s financial filings listed the properties at estimated values more than double the appraiser’s approximate calculations.
Eric Trump claimed that he couldn’t even recall the appraiser’s name, let alone the appraisals.
As he began his evidence, he stated that he “never had anything to do with the statement of financial condition,” that he didn’t believe he’d ever seen one, that he “was not personally aware” of the document, and that he “didn’t know anything about it, really, until this case came into fruition.”
“It’s not what I did for the company,” claimed the son, who has stated that he focuses on property development and management.
Andrew Amer, a state lawyer, then presented him with emails from former Trump Organisation controller Jeffrey McConney from 2013.
In one, McConney informed Eric Trump, who was then in a different job at the company, that he was “working on your father’s statement of financial condition” and required information about one of the company’s properties.
In another communication, McConney stated that he was “working on the notes to Mr. Trump’s annual financial statement” and requested a report on recent big building activity from Eric Trump and others.
“Yes, I know Jeff McConney does financial statements for my father,” Eric Trump admitted as he shifted back in his chair. He jumped right into his response about the “massive real estate organisation,” his voice rising as he spoke.
Emails and records showed he had responded to McConney’s inquiries. When pushed to admit that he was “very familiar” with the financial accounts, Eric Trump dismissed the texts as just responding to an accounting colleague’s request for a property description.
He explained, “I just don’t think it would have registered” that they were for the financial statement.
For his part, Donald Trump Jr. stated that he only interacted with the financial accounts in passing, relying on assurances from business finance officers and an independent accounting firm that the information was correct.
On his second day on the stand on Thursday, he stated that, notwithstanding James’ charges, he believed his father’s financial accounts were “materially accurate.” According to the former president, the paperwork, if anything, understated his riches.
Trump Jr. also claimed that the Trump Organisation paid Bally’s $60 million to acquire the right to operate a public golf course in New York City. The lease transfer details for the former Trump Golf Links Ferry Point in the Bronx were not previously publicized.
Trump Jr. told reporters outside the courthouse that his testimony went “really well, if we were actually dealing with logic and reason, the way business is conducted.”
“Unfortunately, the attorney general has brought forth a case that is purely a political persecution,” the general remarked. “I think it’s a truly scary precedent for New York — for me, for example, before even having a day in court, I’m apparently guilty of fraud for relying on my accountants to do, wait for it: accounting.”
SOURCE – (AP)
