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Donald Trump’s son Eric turned testy on the witness stand on Thursday as he sparred with a lawyer for the New York attorney-general about his knowledge of the financial statements at the heart of a civil fraud case against his family.
Andrew Amer, a lawyer for New York attorney-general Letitia James, repeatedly pressed Eric Trump to admit that he was aware of the annual “statement of financial condition” outlining his father’s wealth and used by the Trump Organization in its business dealings.
Yet Eric Trump denied awareness of the report — even when confronted with a series of emails in which subordinates asked him for information to help prepare it. After more than an hour of questioning by Amer, in which they circled the same topic, the witness appeared to grow flustered.
“We’re a major organisation — a massive real estate organisation. Yes, I’m pretty sure I understand we have financial statements. Absolutely,” he erupted at one point, his voice rising.
The exhausting session took a strange turn late in the day when Christopher Kise, an attorney for the Trumps, suggested bias by Judge Arthur Engoron’s law clerk, prompting a table-pounding rebuke from the judge.
“I have an absolute, unfettered right to get advice from my principal law clerk,” Engoron declared. Moments earlier he told Kise: “I sometimes think there may be a bit of misogyny in your referring to my ‘female’ law clerk.”
Engoron has already found that former president Trump and his adult sons, Donald Jr and Eric, inflated their wealth by as much as $2.2bn in order to secure loans for their family business on advantageous terms and other benefits. The trial will determine whether the Trumps pay upwards of $250mn in penalties and face other sanctions in the lawsuit brought by the New York attorney-general. The defendants have all denied liability.
Eric Trump took the stand at about 11:45am, soon after his older brother concluded his own testimony, which began on Wednesday. Their father is scheduled to testify on Monday, followed by their sister Ivanka.
As he did the previous day, Donald Jr repeatedly directed responsibility for the financial statements to the Trump Organization’s outside accountant, Mazars, and its former long-serving chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, who served three months in jail for a tax evasion scheme he orchestrated at the company.
Donald Jr acknowledged signing a series of certifications for lenders on his father’s behalf, attesting — among other things — that the financial statements were accurate. But he did so with the assurance of other executives, he told the court. Displaying a breezy confidence, Donald Jr dismissed one of these documents as merely a “‘cover your butt’ letter”.
When his turn came, Eric Trump — like his older brother — repeatedly told the court that he “did not recall” various documents presented by the prosecution. He portrayed himself as a busy executive who was accustomed to “pouring concrete” as opposed to dealing with accounting figures. He was emphatic that he had been unaware of his father’s statement of financial condition.
“I don’t think I ever saw or worked on the statement of financial condition,” he told Amer. At another point, he said: “I think I was 26 years old at the time. I don’t recall what I knew at the time.”
Their exchanges grew more tense as Amer presented a 2013 email from Jeffrey McConney, the Trump Organization’s former controller. “Hi Eric, I’m working on your dad’s annual financial statement,” McConney began, and then asked for assistance valuing a Westchester development under Eric Trump’s purview.
A corresponding spreadsheet that McConney used to create the annual statement included a note by the Westchester entry indicating that it was based on a telephone call with Eric Trump.
In another email that month — addressed to Weisselberg and Eric Trump — McConney wrote: “I’m working on notes to Mr Trump’s annual financial statement and I’d like to include any major construction work” from the previous year.
Under pressure, Eric Trump acknowledged that he may have responded to McConney’s requests for information but that it “never registered” to him that it was for the purpose of the financial statement.
Later in the afternoon, Amer used a series of emails to challenge Eric Trump’s contention in a March deposition that he was only “vaguely familiar” with a Cushman & Wakefield appraiser who reviewed the Westchester property.
“It’s extremely inconsistent with what my role was at the company,” Eric Trump said in the March deposition, which Amer played on a video monitor in the courtroom. “To the best of my knowledge, I really haven’t been involved with appraisal work on this property.”
Engoron’s law clerk has been a subplot since the early days of the trial, when the former president falsely identified her on social media as Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer’s “girlfriend” and accused her of influencing the proceedings against him. That led to a partial gag order from Engoron to protect her safety and, eventually, $15,000 in fines against Trump for violating it.
Kise picked up the matter late on Thursday, saying he often felt “like I’m fighting two adversaries” and casting suspicion on the confidential notes passed from the clerk to the judge. He defended himself against Engoron’s allegation of prejudice: “I’m not a misogynist. I’m very happily married and I have a 17-year-old daughter.”
Alina Habba, another Trump lawyer, leapt to Kise’s defence, telling Engoron: “I’m not going to let someone who’s my teammate be called a misogynist.”
Emily Foster is a globe-trotting journalist based in the UK. Her articles offer readers a global perspective on international events, exploring complex geopolitical issues and providing a nuanced view of the world’s most pressing challenges.
