Former US president Donald Trump went off. Again and again. Making the witness stand at his civil fraud trial his podium, Trump laid into the judge who will decide the case and the New York attorney general who is suing him.
During three hours of testimony on Monday, the Republican denied New York Attorney General Letitia James’ allegations that he duped banks by exaggerating his wealth on financial statements used to make deals and secure loans.
“There was no victim. There was no anything,” Trump said.
Photo:AP
He bragged about his riches, saying he has “a lot of cash” and described one of the grown sons he put in charge of his company as a “hard-working boy.”
Trump said of his priorities while president: “My threshold was China, Russia and keeping our country safe.”
His often verbose responses — replete with anecdotes about development projects, the intricacies of property valuations and complaints that he was a victim of a “political witch hunt” — led a frustrated Judge Arthur Engoron to warn: “This is not a political rally.”
Trump made his grievances a focal point of his testimony, amplifying complaints he has made for weeks in front of TV cameras outside the courtroom.
He directed a lot of his ire against the judge, who issued a decision before the trial began holding Trump liable for fraud.
“He ruled against me without knowing anything about me,” Trump testified. “He ruled against me, and he said I was a fraud before he knew anything about me, nothing about me. I think it’s fraudulent, the decision. I think it’s fraudulent. The fraud is on the court, not on me.”
During the trial, the judge has fined Trump US$15,000 for violating a limited gag order barring attacks on court staff, but nothing in the order bars the former president from criticizing the judge.
Engoron did try to clamp down on Trump’s speechifying during his testimony.
“I’m not here to hear what he has to say. I’m here to hear him answer questions,” Engoron told one of Trump’s lawyers.
Trump retorted: “This is a very unfair trial, very, very. And I hope the public is watching it.”
Trump later posted Engoron’s “not here to hear what he has to say” comment to his Truth Social account.
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
Former Lima mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga, a Peruvian presidential hopeful, gathered hundreds of supporters in Lima on Tuesday and gave authorities 24 hours to annul the first round of the country’s election over allegations of fraud. Lopez Aliaga is locked in a tight three-way race with two other candidates for second place in Sunday’s vote. The election runner-up wins a ticket to June’s presidential run-off against front-runner Keiko Fujimori. “I am giving them 24 hours to declare this electoral fraud null and void,” said Lopez Aliaga, surrounded by a crowd of several hundred supporters. “If it is not declared null and void tomorrow,
PAPAL RETORT: Pope Leo told reporters that he has ‘no fear, neither of the Trump administration nor speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel’ US President Donald Trump has feuded with Pope Leo XIV over the Iran conflict — setting off an unholy row that could have serious political implications for the Republican leader back in the US. Trump has drawn barbs even from some allies over the attacks on the US-born pontiff, who has criticized the Trump administration over its immigration crackdown, the intervention in Venezuela and the Iran war. The president risks alienating the religious right in November’s crucial US midterm elections. So far the unprecedented clash between the leader of the most powerful military on Earth and the head of the world’s 1.4 billion
A 16-year-old boy has been charged with murder and aggravated sexual abuse in Florida in the death of his 18-year-old stepsister on a Carnival Cruise ship, the US Department of Justice said on Monday. Timothy Hudson was initially charged in February and subsequently indicted on March 10, but the breadth of the case was not known until a seal was lifted on Friday last week, weeks after US District Judge Beth Bloom in Miami said that he would be prosecuted as an adult at the request of the government. Anna Kepner had been traveling on the Carnival Horizon ship in November last
RSS