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.
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