Donald Trump Testified In His Civil Fraud Trial - It Went Exactly As You’d Expect

Former President Trump clashed frequently with the judge overseeing his New York fraud trial as the former president spent hours on the witness stand in Manhattan on Monday.

Trump’s highly-anticipated testimony grew chaotic, with the judge asking Trump’s attorney to take control of his client who was, in our opinion, acting like a child. The former president also ticked off his political grievances from the witness stand, to which the judge responded that the court hearing was “not a political rally.”

“It’s a terrible thing you’ve done. You know nothing about me,” Trump said during one verbal strike from the witness stand. “You believe that political hack back there,” he said, looking toward New York Attorney General Tish James, who brought the $250 million civil fraud case against Trump, his adult sons and officers in the Trump Organization.

“Either people are very stupid, or there’s a fraud,” Trump said, referring to an aspect of a crucial pretrial ruling in which the judge, Justice Arthur Engoron, found that Trump systematically inflated his assets to obtain favorable terms from banks and insurers. As a result of that ruling, the trial is largely about what penalties Trump and his company will face — and because there is no jury, Engoron will decide that issue as well.

Trump’s primary defense, which he has offered publicly since the start of the trial and which he repeated during his testimony, is that his financial statements contained “very, very powerful” disclaimers and therefore weren’t intended for use by banks or insurers.

“We have a disclaimer clause that says do your own due diligence, don’t under any circumstances count on anything in here,” Trump said. Of the financial statements, he said: “If you were borrowing money … they were not really documents that the banks paid much attention to. They looked at the deal, they looked at the asset … but these were not very important.”

After Trump launched into yet another monologue about the disclaimers, the judge stopped him.

“No, no, no,” Engoron said. “We’re not going to hear about the disclaimer clause. If you want to hear about the disclaimer clause, read my opinion again — or for the first time, perhaps.”

“You’re wrong in your opinion,” Trump replied, adding: “He called me a fraud and he didn’t know anything about me.”

Aside from grimacing, Engoron didn’t react to Trump’s attacks. But the judge did become incensed at several points when Trump seemingly refused to answer questions he was being asked by a lawyer for the attorney general’s office.

“I beseech you to control him if you can,” Engoron told Trump lawyer Chris Kise less than an hour into the former president’s turn on the witness stand. “If you can’t, I will,” the judge said. “I will excuse him and draw every negative inference that I can.”

“This is not a political rally. This is a courtroom,” Engoron told Kise, ordering him to counsel his client to provide answers responsive to the questions

Trump was in a sullen mood from the start. On his way into the courtroom on Monday morning, he called the case “political warfare” and said it was something that occurs in “banana republics.”

With a scowl on his face and his shoulders hunched, he took the stand, raised his right hand to be sworn in and sat in the witness box to face questions in what is just the current chapter in a long line of legal problems that Trump is grappling with as he seeks a return to the White House.

It didn’t take long for Engoron to grow frustrated as Trump delivered repetitive and non-responsive answers.

Asked to name properties he believed were over or under-valued, Trump responded by saying his Trump Tower triplex apartment had likely been overvalued, then launched into a soliloquy about brand value.

During one heated exchange, Trump attorney Alina Habba snapped at the judge, telling him: “You are here to hear what he has to say.”

Engoron shouted in response, commanding her to “sit down.”

“No, I am not here to hear what he has to say!” he yelled. “I am here to hear him answer questions.”

From the witness stand, Trump interjected, leaning into the microphone: “This is a very unfair trial — very, very — and I hope the public is watching.”

Trump sat just a few feet from the judge, whom Trump has called “tyrannical and unhinged,” and the judge’s law clerk, who has been a long-running target of the ex-president, earning him a gag order.

Lawyers for the attorney general’s office questioned Trump about his level of involvement with financial statements valuing his net worth and whether he directed the people creating those statements to inflate the figures.

He also faced questions about the reporting structure of the Trump Organization and how that changed after he became president, as well as whether he intended for banks and insurers to rely on the allegedly fraudulent financial documents.

His testimony Monday was technically the second time Trump has taken the stand during the month-old trial. In late October, he testified for several minutes about out-of-court statements about the clerk, Allison Greenfield, which resulted in the judge issuing the second of two fines for violating the gag order.