Trump “arbitrarily” inflated the value of his real estate assets, Cohen testified Tuesday
Donald Trump’s longtime “fixer” and former lawyer took the stand against him on Tuesday and alleged that the former president “arbitrarily” inflated the value of his real estate assets in order to secure better insurance premiums.
Cohen testified during Tuesday’s hearing in the former president’s New York civil fraud case. Cohen, who severed his relationship with Trump five years ago, is a key witness in the lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, which accuses Trump of exaggerating and devaluing his family companies’ properties to make business deals. The case threatens to dismantle part of the business empire that catapulted Trump into celebrity and the Oval Office.
According to Reuters, the key witness told the judge that Trump instructed him to “reverse-engineer” the values of many of the Trump Organization’s holdings so the company’s statements of financial condition would display the assets as having “extremely high values with low liabilities in order to secure better insurance premiums.”
The holdings’ values would be “whatever number Mr. Trump told us,” Cohen said ahead of the trial’s lunch break.
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Cohen also acknowledged his complicity in crimes he said he committed for the former president’s benefit at the start of his highly anticipated testimony in Trump’s civil fraud case, CNN reports.
A prosecutor from the New York attorney general’s office questioned Cohen about the crimes he pleaded guilty to in 2018, which include tax crimes, campaign violations and lying to Congress. Cohen responded with a lengthy answer rehashing the crimes and outlining why he made public statements about the legitimacy of his conviction.
He had previously testified before Congress in 2019 about Trump’s involvement in the hush-money plot involving both former Playboy model Karen McDougal and adult-film actress Stormy Daniels, who claimed to have had affairs with Trump — allegations Trump has denied.
“I acknowledge my complicity in the Stormy Daniels matter, but I never paid Karen McDougal,” Cohen said, clarifying that payments to McDougal were made through AMI, the National Enquirer’s former owner.
Trump did not react when Cohen spoke about the hush-money payments, instead staring straight ahead at the witness.
