The ex-president insulted Justice Arthur Engoron and helped Atty. Gen. Letitia James. Ivanka Trump’s testimony looked polite and uneventful by contrast.
Exasperated by Donald Trump’s nonresponsive monologues during testimony in his New York fraud trial this week, state Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron finally told the former president’s lawyer to rein him in. “This is not a political rally,” the judge said. “This is a courtroom.”
Engoron, however, was mistaken. It was a courtroom and a political rally.
Trump turned his time on the stand into a tub-thumping recitation of the themes he hopes will carry him into a second term: that the deep state is persecuting him for his popularity and his election would constitute retribution for him and his supporters.
Trump’s testimony was first and foremost a high-stakes legal showdown in a civil case that threatens to impoverish his family and decimate their brand. And from a legal vantage point, he was routed.
The judge has already found in favor of New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James that Trump and his company committed fraud. The fight now centers on the extent of the Trumps’ liability for a series of comically inflated valuations of their properties, chiefly to secure loans.
Trump’s testimony included a series of damaging admissions within a dust cloud of attacks on the judge, the attorney general and the entire process. It scored many important legal points for James and none for Trump.
Wednesday’s appearance by his daughter Ivanka was by contrast largely polite and professional. She did help set up James’ claim that her father misrepresented his personal wealth to secure lower interest rates, but her testimony might have seemed uneventful to someone wandering into the courtroom.
Not so the elder Trump. In response to questioning by state attorney Kevin Wallace earlier this week, he acknowledged more than once that he had reduced the valuation of assets such as his Westchester County, N.
