MANHATTAN (CN) — Steven Witkoff isn’t a seasoned expert witness — far from it. He said as much on Tuesday when the Manhattan judge overseeing Donald Trump’s fraud trial asked Witkoff if he'd ever testified as an expert before that day.
“I don’t think so,” Witkoff said. “My mother might think I am, but that’s about it, judge.”
Nonetheless, Witkoff took the stand to testify in the New York attorney general’s $250 million civil case against the Trump family and its namesake business. The New York City-based real estate executive with longtime ties to Trump and the Trump Organization was the first expert witness to be called by defense attorneys, who began presenting their case Monday.
Witkoff donated more than $2 million to Trump’s political action groups, according to a 2021 ProPublica report. The former president called him “a friend of mine,” “my pal” and a “special guy” during a roundtable event in 2018.
On the stand Witkoff recalled the origins of his budding friendship with Trump, which apparently started at a New York City deli in 1986 after the pair had worked on a transaction together.
“I ordered him a ham and swiss,” Witkoff said, remembering that Trump had no cash on him at the time.
Seven or eight years later he ran into Trump, who remembered “the sandwich incident,” Witkoff testified. The two became friends after that; Witkoff even advised Trump on tax breaks during his presidency.
Witkoff said Tuesday that he wasn't being paid for his expert testimony, an uncommon practice and apparent symbol of his friendship with Trump. After Engoron approved him as an expert witness in real estate development, Witkoff tried to tell the court about the value of Trump’s Doral golf course in Miami. But an objection from the state snowballed into a lengthy argument about the very foundation of the trial.
Trump’s lawyers tried to make the argument that Doral was severely undervalued on Trump’s scrutinized financial documents, pointing out that mere mistakes don’t constitute fraud. But Judge Arthur Engoron, who already ruled the documents were fraudulently inflated before the trial began, retorted that one undervalued property doesn’t excuse an overvalued one.
“[If] it turns out that one is overvalued by $300 million and one is undervalued by $300 million… it balances out and there is no fraud?” Engoron asked Trump’s legal team.
The attorney general’s office sharply refuted that logic.
“That’s nonsense,” state attorney Andrew Amer said, adding that the value of the Doral property wasn’t even an issue in the attorney general’s complaint.
After some debate, Engoron agreed. He sustained the state’s objection, calling it “common sense.”
“It’s not okay to overvalue one property and undervalue another because it balances out,” Engoron said, putting the heated back-and-forth to rest.
Witkoff continued his testimony, but only briefly. Engoron ruled that he couldn’t talk about Doral’s valuation, dealing a blow to the defense’s apparent strategy with the witness.
The attorney general’s office was concerned about Witkoff’s testimony long before Tuesday, however. Last week, state lawyers tried to block him from taking the stand altogether, alongside three other expert witnesses for the defense.
Amer on Thursday told Engoron that the four witnesses are “simply not relevant to any remaining issues in this case.”
But Engoron, fearing grounds for a reversal, denied the state’s motion to block the defense’s experts.
“I don’t want a retrial of this case,” he said. “I’m going to allow the testimony without prejudice to objecting to anything that may be irrelevant.”
Another one of those controversial expert witnesses, Ankura accountant Jason Flemmons, took the stand after Witkoff on Tuesday. In a roughly four-hour testimony that even Flemmons admitted was “dense,” the forensic accountant walked the court through standard bookkeeping procedures.
“I took Accounting 101,” Engoron quipped at one point during his testimony.
Flemmons noted that there are numerous ways for an asset to be appraised, a key argument for Trump’s lawyers in their efforts to explain the numerous overvaluations on the statements of financial condition.
The accountant even touched on the “disclaimer clause” in Trump’s financial statements, saying it advises readers to “beware” of potential discrepancies in the documents, even though Engoron already ruled in his summary judgment that the argument isn't a sufficient defense to the fraud claims.
In that September order, Engoron found Trump and his co-defendants liable for the top fraud count in Attorney General Letitia James’ lengthy lawsuit.
“You cannot make false statements and use them in business,” Engoron said from the bench forcefully at the September hearing preceding his ruling.
The ongoing trial is set to determine the remaining fraud counts and the damages the Trumps and their associates will have to fork over to the state.
Flemmons will continue testifying on Wednesday.
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