MANHATTAN (CN) — Donald Trump’s lawyers on Tuesday tried to delay the former president’s testimony, pleading with the court to let their gag order appeal run its course prior to Trump taking the stand again.
It’s a big ask from the defense team. Trump, who is slated to testify on Dec. 11, is poised to be the final witness in the defense’s case against the attorney general’s fraud accusations.
Judge Arthur Engoron said Tuesday it will stay that way, too.
“Absolutely not. No way, no how,” Engoron told Trump’s lead attorney Chris Kise. “But you tried.”
The longshot request wasn’t an unexpected move from the defense team, who spent a bulk of Monday trying to escalate their gag order appeal to New York’s highest court in unusually expedient fashion.
Their bid was ultimately denied. A judge ruled Monday that Trump would have to wait for a “full panel” of judges to make a decision on his request. With Engoron denying the defense request to postpone Trump’s testimony, the former president will now almost certainly have to testify under the restrictions of the court’s gag orders, which ban him from berating members of the court’s staff.
Engoron instituted one gag order earlier in the trial after Trump attacked the judge's chief law clerk on social media, leading to a barrage of harassment that flooded the judge’s office. Engoron later enacted a second gag order that extended to the trial’s attorneys after Trump lawyer Alina Habba repeatedly complained about the same law clerk in open court.
Both gag orders were briefly paused in November by a momentary stay issued by Associate Justice David Friedman, but they were reinstated two weeks later by a panel of judges in the appellate court.
Testimony is set to wrap up next week with Trump’s final appearance on the witness stand, so it’s unlikely that the gag order appeal will have much of an effect, regardless of the result.
The former president could be back in court as early as this week, according to reports, but the same can’t be said for his son Eric Trump. Eric Trump was initially billed to take the stand Wednesday, but defense lawyer Clifford Robert announced Tuesday that plans have changed, and Eric Trump will no longer testify for the defense at all. He offered no immediate explanation for the last-minute change.
After scheduling discussions, the trial proceeded Tuesday with testimony from Lawrence Moens, a Palm Beach-based realtor who testified as another expert witness for the defense.
Moens eccentric testimony was interrupted as quickly as it began. His phone rang just minutes after he took the stand and he answered — a shocking move for a witness mid-testimony. He muttered a few words to the person on the other line, who Moens referred to as “dad,” before hanging up.
Engoron, known for his informality, brushed off the peculiar exchange.
Moens mainly testified Tuesday that Trump had conservatively valued Mar-a-Lago. The attorney general’s office claimed that Trump had grossly inflated the value of the property on his yearly financial statements, citing a Palm Beach County Assessor valuation of between $18 million and $27.6 million from 2011 to 2021.
Moens testified Trump could have valued it even higher than he did. The realtor told the court that he saw Mar-a-Lago’s value as high as $1.2 billion in 2021, nearly double what Trump had valued the property on his financial statements that same year.
To back up his testimony, Moens came armed with a roughly seven-minute video showcasing Mar-a-Lago’s beauty, which state lawyer Kevin Wallace brushed off as “marketing” material.
Moens seemed to take offense.
“I don’t use videos to market properties,” he insisted.
At one point, Engoron excused Moens from the stand to question the nature of his testimony. The judge said that whether or not Mar-a-Lago was properly valued isn’t necessarily relevant to the case.
“I see this case as about the documents, whether the defendants used false documents in transacting business,” Engoron said.
Engoron said that he’d continue to allow the testimony.
“But I’m not trying to figure out what the value [of Mar-a-Lago] is,” he added.
Engoron already found Trump and his co-defendants committed fraud by inflating asset values on his statements of financial condition — documents that were sent to banks and insurance companies to complete business transactions.
Trump’s lawyers immediately appealed the summary judgment. They have since been arguing at trial that the defendants never intentionally defrauded anybody and that no banks or insurers were harmed by their actions.
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