MANHATTAN (CN) — Jeff McConney, the former controller at the Trump Organization, broke down in tears Tuesday while delivering his defense testimony in the $250 million civil fraud lawsuit against his ex-employer.
McConney, who stepped down from the Trump Organization earlier this year, was asked why he left the company after more than three decades. The 68-year-old took a long pause before nostalgically recounting the years of investigations that eventually took a toll on him.
“I’m an accountant. I’m an honest person,” McConney said. “I got to do a lot of things that a normal accountant wouldn’t be able to do. I’m very proud of the work I did for 35 years… But I just couldn’t deal with it anymore. I just wanted to relax and stop being accused of misrepresenting assets.”
The usually stoic McConney wiped his tears with a tissue, provided by a court officer, as he collected himself. Judge Arthur Engoron asked if he was okay to continue, or if he wanted to take a moment, but McConney assured the judge that he was all right.
McConney took the witness stand earlier in the trial when he was questioned by the attorney general’s office about his role in fraudulently inflating assets on the Trump Organization’s statements of financial condition. He returned to the stand this week to field questions from his own lawyers as the defense makes its case against the state.
Moments before his teary testimony, McConney returned to a point of emphasis for investigators throughout the trial: the valuation of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in South Florida. Investigators say Trump valued the property as a private residence on his financial statements in order to boost its worth, despite the fact that it actually operated as a corporate entity.
McConney couldn’t recall on Tuesday why the Trump Organization valued it as a residence as opposed to a private club.
“We didn’t value it as an operating club,” McConney conceded, but “I don’t remember off the top of my head” why that was.
He classified Mar-a-Lago as “a social club” minutes later, but denied any intentional wrongdoing when it came to valuing the estate.”
“Our intention was always to reflect as best we could the value of these properties,” McConney said.
McConney’s testimony on Mar-a-Lago was reminiscent of Eric Trump’s, who testified earlier this month that Mar-a-Lago was “a private residence, not a club.” He later admitted that the property was, in fact, “used as a private club.”
Throughout his defense testimony on Monday and Tuesday, McConney hammered on one consistent point — that the company’s external accountants were responsible for catching issues on Trump’s statements of financial condition, not the Trump Organization.
McConney walked the court through numerous documents shared between himself and accountants from Mazars USA, the firm who compiled those yearly financial statements on behalf of Trump.
Primarily, McConney said he communicated with Donald Bender, the retired Mazars accountant who testified last month that the Trump Organization withheld some information from him while compiling the financial statements. McConney declined ever doing so and shifted the blame to Bender, who McConney said he relied on to catch any red flags.
“I relied on him for a lot of stuff,” McConney said of Bender.
McConney claimed that Bender’s process of compiling the financial statements was an interactive one; Bender was supposed to ensure the compilations were accurate by checking the supporting data and asking questions when necessary.
“Would Mr. Bender request information from you?” Defense attorney Jesus Suarez asked McConney.
“Yes,” McConney replied. “If he had a question about something or wanted more information about something.”
“What would you send him?” Suarez asked.
“Anything I used to back up my numbers,” McConney said.
Bender is not a defendant in the state’s $250 million fraud trial against the Trump Organization. McConney is, on behalf of the company, alongside Donald Trump, Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and the business’s former finance chief Allen Weisselberg.
Attorney General Letitia James brought the suit last year, claiming the defendants conned banks and insurers out of millions of dollars by fraudulently inflating yearly financial statements. Defense attorneys claim that it was up to external accountants like Bender to keep the statements accurate. In his testimony, Bender disagreed.
“That was the Trump Organization's responsibility,” Bender told the court last month.
Judge Engoron already found the defendants liable for the case’s top fraud count. The ongoing trial, set to wrap up around mid-December, will determine damages and the remaining counts.
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