MANHATTAN (CN) — Trump Organization executive Patrick Birney was back on the witness stand Friday, as the New York Attorney General’s Office continued to press him on how the company arrived at the often wildly inflated estimates of Trump’s asset values.
Birney, currently the assistant vice president of financial operations at the Trump Organization, was part of a team of employees tasked with putting together Trump’s now-scrutinized statements of financial condition.
“It’s that special time of year where we update the president’s net worth summary for the Bloomberg Billionaires Index,” then-Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, a co-defendant in the case, wrote in an email to Birney.
It was already revealed via ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s deposition that Trump would often ask those around him to increase the estimated value of his assets if he “wanted to be higher on the Forbes list.” But Birney’s testimony Friday revealed that he may have held a similar attitude towards Bloomberg’s comparable Billionaires Index.
Birney unenthusiastically walked the courtroom through internal communications that revealed numerous strategies Trump attempted to boost his net worth and appear more wealthy to the likes of Forbes and Bloomberg.
Guided by questions from Eric Haren of the Attorney General’s Office, Birney revealed that one of these tactics was called “presidential premiums.”
Birney testified that in 2017, the Trump Organization strongly considered adding more than $144 million to Trump’s overall net worth, predicated on the fact that his properties are worth more since he is the president of the United States. The premiums fluctuated between 15% and 35% for Trump’s various properties, which included Mar-a-Lago and his Manhattan triplex in Trump Tower.
The idea was floated to address a $200 million drop in Trump’s net worth caused by Forbes revealing the true size of the Trump Tower penthouse, which was about one third of what Trump had previously claimed.
Forbes actually did slightly increase the worth of some of Trump’s properties after he became the president, but not nearly to the extent that the Trump Organization considered.
Even so, the presidential premiums never made it to Trump’s finalized statement of financial condition that year. Instead, the former president relied on another strategy to address the shortfall: manipulating his property’s capitalization rates.
Haren brought up several emails between the Trump Organization and commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield about one of Trump’s properties in midtown Manhattan. In one email, it was revealed that an appropriate cap rate for the property would have been around 4%.
But Birney testified that, after receiving that email, the Trump Organization valued the property at a cap rate of 2.67%. The lower cap rate added more than $1 billion to the property’s value and hundreds of millions of dollars to Trump’s net worth.
Birney also claimed Weisselberg was often the man with the final say on Trump’s asset valuations, and gave the final sign-off on his statements of financial conditions. Birney said he was often directed by Weisselberg himself when making these appraisals, and “probably” would have followed his orders to use a certain cap rate on Trump’s property calculations.
That seemed to contrast with Weisselberg’s own assertions; he claimed in his own testimony that he didn’t have much to do with the specific calculations of Trump’s assets like the penthouse.
Birney will return to the stand on Monday to continue facing questions, the Attorney General’s Office told Engoron on Friday. Weisselberg testified on Tuesday and Thursday, before his questioning was abruptly paused to resume at a later date.
Former president Trump was notably absent from the Manhattan courthouse this week, after his presence last week brought a tsunami of public and media attention. He left last Wednesday to focus on his 2024 presidential campaign, but is rumored to return on Tuesday of next week.
Without Trump, the courthouse was noticeably emptier this short week. Last week’s crowded rows of press gave way to about a dozen courtroom regulars. At least one member of the audience fell asleep during this week’s proceedings, which were highlighted by Weisselberg’s testimony and the fallout that ensued.
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