MANHATTAN (CN) — Former President Donald Trump strutted back into the New York Supreme Court in Manhattan for one final time Thursday, sporting his customary navy blue suit and red tie.
After more than three months, the civil fraud trial against the former president is coming to a close. The 10-week trial, which was paused in mid-December, picked up again on Thursday for closing arguments.
Trump had initially planned to deliver a portion of these closings himself, according to court documents. But he refused to abide by Judge Arthur Engoron’s rules to keep his speech appropriate and relevant, so the judge barred him from contributing to Thursday’s closings.
That didn’t stop him. Just before Thursday’s lunch break, defense attorney Chris Kise asked the judge once more if Trump could “briefly” address the court.
Engoron, in a show of extraordinary patience, allowed Trump one more chance to agree to keep things appropriate. Trump declined to agree, but started to speak anyway.
“This is a political witch hunt,” Trump said. “We should receive damages for what this company has gone through.”
Trump laid into New York Attorney General Letitia James, claiming that he was an “innocent man” who was being “persecuted by someone running for office.”
“This is partially election interference, but in particular the person in the room right now hates Trump and uses Trump to get elected,” he said. “I’ve done a lot of great things… all of the sudden I have a problem.”
Engoron alerted Trump that there was just one minute left until the lunch break. Trump shifted his fury to him.
“You have your own agenda,” Trump said. “You can’t listen for more than one minute.”
“Mr. Kise, please control your client,” Engoron said finally, excusing the courtroom for lunch shortly after.
Trump’s theatrics came after a morning of closing statements from his defense lawyers in the 2022 lawsuit. In it, James accused Trump of fraudulently inflating his net worth on annual financial statements to short banks and insurers.
Prior to the start of trial in October, Engoron found Trump and his co-defendants liable for the case’s top fraud count. Kise argued Thursday that the judge’s pretrial decision was the only proof the attorney general cited as to how banks lost money on Trump’s business transactions.
“They didn’t cite any witnesses,” he exclaimed. “Not a single witness on that stand.”
James seeks a $370 million disgorgement penalty from Trump and his co-defendants. Seeking to bring that dollar amount down, Kise claimed that any evidence of Trump’s intent came from a single unreliable witness: Michael Cohen, Trump's former attorney and fixer.
“Michael Cohen is the attorney general’s only witness on intent,” Kise said Thursday. “They don’t have anybody else.”
Kise berated the attorney general for putting the judge in the “uncomfortable position” of having to find Cohen, now an outspoken critic of Trump, credible. During his testimony, Cohen told the court that Trump instructed him to “reverse-engineer” his financial statements.
“This is a serial liar,” Kise said of Cohen.
But according to the attorney general’s office, it was the defense’s witnesses who were untruthful. In the plaintiffs’ closing arguments, state lawyer Kevin Wallace dismantled the testimonies from what he called Trump’s “murderers’ row of experts.”
Kise interrupted the presentation and lambasted Wallace for the coy slang.
“To use that caustic term, that’s outrageous,” Kise exclaimed.
The judge urged Kise to consider it “poetic license,” as it was clear Wallace wasn’t accusing his experts of being actual murderers. Cooler heads prevailed.
Wallace continued with his speech, in which he accused the defendants of acting “intentionally” in their fraud.
“In fact, there was no suggestion that any of this was a mistake,” Wallace said. “There was no suggestion that this was a rogue operation.”
Wallace added that Trump stood by the work of his employees who produced his phony financial statements, claiming that they were rewarded for inflating Trump’s net worth — not punished.
“The team stuck together,” Wallace said.
In asking the judge for disgorgement, Wallace cited the defense’s repeated “zombie argument” that the state isn’t entitled to seek it, an argument the judge has already rejected.
He also chided Trump and his lawyers for continuously claiming that the trial was “unfair.”
“The defendants and their counsel cannot stop telling everyone through a microphone that this is a witch hunt,” Wallace said.
Trump had left the courthouse by the time the attorney general’s office started its closing arguments on Thursday. In fact, he was downtown holding a press conference of his own in an apparent stunt to divert attention from the trial.
Engoron said he hopes to have a ruling by the end of January. Trump could face hundreds of millions of dollars in disgorgement, as well as a lifetime ban on practicing real estate in New York State. His adult sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, both co-defendants in the case against their father, could face a five-year industry ban.
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