Donald Trump Jr. testifies for defense in New York civil fraud trial

Donald Trump Jr. returned to the witness stand Monday to give his family’s side of the story in the New York attorney general’s civil fraud trial against Donald Trump.

Trump Jr.’s testimony often appeared as a lengthy effort to rehabilitate the image of the Trump Organization in the eyes of Judge Arthur Engoron. The former president’s son gushed about the properties he said his father had transformed from dilapidated run-down tracts of land into spectacular and magnificent buildings and golf courses.

Trump Jr., a co-defendant in the case, was glowing as he described the company’s portfolio – lauding praise on his father as a visionary and a real estate “artist” and talking up the value of the buildings after six weeks of testimony from the attorney general alleging that the valuations of the properties were fraudulently inflated.

The testimony signaled how Trump’s lawyers plan to mount a defense in a case in which Engoron has already ruled the former president and his co-defendants were liable for fraud. Engoron is now deciding six additional claims and potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.

Here are key takeaways from Monday’s day in court:

Trump Jr. boasts about the Trump Org. portfolio: Trump lawyer Cliff Robert spent most of the day asking Trump Jr. to walk through nearly the entire portfolio of the Trump Org.

Trump Jr. discussed the various projects around the world over the past several decades, narrating a sleekly produced promotional timeline from the company’s website. He described various golf holes, clubhouses, architecture and other features of the Trump properties as beauty shots were displayed in the courtroom.

While talking about the Seven Springs resort, a Westchester, New York, property that’s part of the attorney general’s case, Trump Jr. said the property was “spectacular” and a “potential canvas for [his] father’s art.”

“He’s an artist with real estate. He sees the things that other people don’t,” Trump Jr. said of his father.

The Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, was swampland before his father took it over. “No one for decades had seen any value in it,” Trump Jr. said, and his father turned it into “one of the finest golf clubs in the world.”

And of the Trump National Doral Golf Club in Florida, Trump Jr. said: “He saw a jewel in the rough and wanted to bring it back to its former glory.”

At one point, Robert even played the company’s promotional video of the Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point in the Bronx, featuring golf legend Jack Nicklaus praising the course.

Read more takeaways from Trump Jr.’s testimony here.

Before leaving the stand, Donald Trump Jr. said the future of the Trump Organization may depend on next year’s presidential election.

“I guess a lot of that depends on what happens next November,” Trump Jr. said. “We’ll probably be put on hold for a little while and sued into oblivion for the foreseeable future.”

Trump attorney Cliff Robert also walked Trump Jr. through some of the more recent Trump Organization properties, including the Trump International Hotel at the Old Post Office location in Washington, DC.

The property looked like “a war zone” before the General Services Administration awarded the project to Trump Organization, Trump Jr. said.

If you saw it at the time, he said, “You’d be disappointed that you could let a building that spectacular get that run down.”

Robert also asked Trump Jr. how many people Trump Org. employed in New York and the taxes the company paid. Trump Jr. said that the company employed about 1,000 people, and the number was higher counting subcontractors on building projects during the timeframe relevant to this case of 2011 to 2021.

Robert also asked how much Trump Org paid in taxes during that time. Trump Jr. said it was maybe tens of millions. “I don’t know specifically, but it’s a big number,” he said.

Donald Trump Jr. completed his testimony in the civil fraud trial against him, his father, his brother Eric, and their company after a brief cross-examination by attorney Colleen Faherty of the New York attorney general’s office, who questioned him about various issues with Trump properties.

Faherty asked Trump Jr. to confirm the 40 Wall Street loan was put on a servicer’s watch list. Trump’s legal team argued in an objection that the loan was put on watch because of Judge Arthur Engoron’s summary judgment, which found Donald Trump and his co-defendants were liable for fraud. 

The judge overruled the objection. “You’re going to start questioning relevance. I just gave you a whole morning of irrelevance,” he said.

Trump Jr. said he wasn’t aware the loan was put on the watch list. Faherty then asked Trump Jr. if he was aware that the loan was put on a watch list in February, and he said he was not.

Faherty also pointed to a statistic in an article she showed the court that occupancy was at 77% at Trump’s 40 Wall Street building. Trump Jr. had testified during direct examination that occupancy was somewhere higher than 90% last he checked.

She concluded her questioning by asking Trump Jr. about the fact Hilton is rebranding the Trump International Hotel Waikiki to remove the Trump name from the property. Trump Jr. responded that if the company wanted to pay millions of dollars to remove the name it was fine with him.

Trump attorney Cliff Robert has wrapped up his direct examination of Donald Trump Jr. after discussing the company’s work at the Old Post Office building in Washington, DC.

Colleen Faherty will next cross-examine Trump Jr. for the New York attorney general’s office.

Judge Arthur Engoron allowed Donald Trump’s attorney Cliff Robert to submit into evidence a February 2022 valuation of Trump’s Doral Golf Resort & Spa that valued the property at $1.3 billion, over objections from the New York attorney general’s team.

The judge allowed the document – a third party’s valuation of Trump’s Doral resort – to be used for a limited purpose even though it was dated outside the relevant time period in this case, telling Trump’s team he’s tried to give them “the benefit of the doubt.”

The judge, nevertheless, noted, “I can’t see any relevance.”

The attorney general’s office argued that the document was not relevant to the case and could not be used later by an expert witness to offer a post-dated valuation of Doral, one of the properties that the attorney general alleges was fraudulently inflated in value on Trump’s financial statements.

Engoron, in a sign of his view about how to handle the defense’s presentation, asked the lawyers for the attorney general, “Do you want to risk a reversal over this one stupid document?”

After Engoron allowed the document to be admitted, Robert asked Trump Jr. if he was familiar with the 2022 valuation, before returning to questions about the various properties in the Trump Org. portfolio.

In Donald Trump Jr.’s narrative in court Monday, his father has taken over dilapidated buildings and properties and used his skills as a “visionary” to turn them all into one of the best in the city, the country and in some cases, the world.

When the Trump Organization took over the Trump Park Avenue building, Donald Trump Jr. oversaw the renovation project and testified Trump Org. created a space with one of the highest prices per square foot in the city at the time, he said.

Trump Jr. referred to the additions they added to the top of the Park Avenue building as being like the Louvre with glass cubes added to provide more light.

The Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, was swampland before his father took it over. “No one for decades had seen any value in it,” Trump Jr. said, and Donald Trump turned it into “one of the finest golf clubs in the world.”

Trump Jr. said that when the Trump Org. developed the Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles, his father “noticed a crown jewel and had to have it and turn it into something special.”

Trump attorney Cliff Robert has spent the morning walking Trump Jr. through nearly all of the Trump properties to help build the narrative, including some of the properties that the New York attorney general alleges were fraudulently inflated in value on Trump’s financial statements.

During his questioning by the attorney general’s office earlier in the trial, Trump Jr. claimed he wasn’t familiar with the valuations of the properties included on the financial statements.

The New York attorney general’s office will have the chance to cross-examine Trump Jr. again, and could raise his awareness of the value of the assets in question in this case.

Donald Trump Jr. has a penchant for superlatives, just like his father.

While talking about the Seven Springs resort, a Westchester, New York, property that’s part of the attorney general’s civil fraud case, Trump Jr. said the property was “spectacular” and a “potential canvas for [his] father’s art.”

“He’s an artist with real estate. He sees the things that other people don’t,” Trump Jr. said of the former president.

Trump attorney Cliff Robert is spending considerable time going through the various Trump properties, showing photos from a slick timeline of the Trump Organization that’s on the company’s website.

Robert is also using the history lesson to give Trump Jr. the chance to try to poke holes in the attorney general’s case.

Trump Jr. gave a detailed virtual tour of Mar-A-Lago — which he praised as “one of the few sort of American castles” — as his attorney walked him through property photos.

Trump’s eldest son said with a smile that he was a bit upset when media reports about this case suggested that Mar-a-Lago was worth only $18 million.

Judge Arthur Engoron ruled before the start of the trial cited tax assessor data that appraised the property at $18 million – a figure that has drawn repeated criticism from the former president. Engoron has said he was not valuing the property.

Judge Arthur Engoron sided with Donald Trump’s attorneys, overruling an objection from the New York attorney general’s office to admit a PowerPoint presentation showcasing the history of the Trump Organization.

Donald Trump Jr. walked through the history of the company, going all the way back to his great grandfather, who he says created hotels for miners during the gold rush in the Yukon territory in Canada.

The presentation, titled “The Trump story,” also included photos of Donald Trump with his father, Fred Trump, as well as sleek photos of various Trump buildings.

The PowerPoint included Trump’s purchase of Mar-a-Lago in 1985, which Trump Jr. described as “one of the few sort of American castles.”

“Since we’ve gone back to the early 1900s, is there a waiver of the statute of limitations?” Andrew Amer, a lawyer with the attorney general, said to laughs.

Assistant Attorney General Kevin Wallace objected to the presentation, claiming the text descriptions were coaching the witness.

But Engoron allowed the presentation.

“Having given you six weeks, you’re going to get me in trouble with Mr. (Chris) Kise — he’s going to say I always rule against him,“ Engoron said. “No let this stuff come in.”

More context: The judge agreed with the defense after weeks of rejecting objections from Trump’s lawyers during the attorney general’s presentation. But in the last few days, Engoron has sided with Trump’s team, including saying last week he’d let their experts testify because he doesn’t want a retrial and doesn’t want to be reversed.

The judge has also sided with Trump’s lawyers during the trial, but this signals the judge is going to give a lot of leeway to both sides in their presentation.

So far in his testimony, Donald Trump Jr. has at times spoken quickly as he answered questions from Trump attorney Cliff Robert.

At one point, Judge Arthur Engoron had him pause for the court reporter to catch up, telling Trump Jr., “Welcome back.”

Donald Trump Jr. began his testimony Monday by explaining his role at the Trump Organization both before and after his father became president in 2017.

Trump Jr., the first witness for the defense in his father’s civil case, said he and his brother became “asset managers” because they decided not to do new deals while his father was president.

“In retrospect, that was probably a mistake,” Trump Jr. said,

Everyone claimed “we were still doing that, so it didn’t really matter and we got no credit for it.”

For the years before Trump was elected president, Trump Jr. and his siblings Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump were on the ground running their own projects with their own autonomous roles, Trump Jr. said.

Walking through the work he and his siblings did before Trump became president, he said “we worked collectively but each one of us had our collective buckets.”

In 2017, Eric Trump took over more of the day to day and Trump Jr. said he worked on “bigger picture” deals, while Ivanka Trump left for Washington DC with their father. Their father was not involved, and they didn’t bring business to him, Trump Jr. said. “It would have been very apparent, very quickly if he was involved,” he added.

Donald Trump Jr. has taken the stand as the first defense witness in the New York civil fraud trial against him, his father Donald Trump and their company as Trump’s attorneys begin presenting their side.

Trump’s attorney Cliff Robert is questioning Trump Jr., whose demeanor so far is lighthearted as he discusses his early work at the Trump Organization.

The New York attorney general’s office rested its civil fraud case last week against former President Donald Trump, his adult sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric, and their company.

Trump Jr. will be the first witness for the defense on Monday, and Trump attorneys have said they are likely to call back Eric Trump and the former president to the stand.

The trial is entering its seventh week, with testimony from a total of 25 witnesses — 24 of which were in person.

Ivanka Trump was the last witness called before the attorney general’s office rested its case. She followed testimony from her father and her brothers, Donald Jr. and Eric.

Judge Arthur Engoron had already ruled before the start of the trial that Donald Trump and his co-defendants committed “persistent and repeated” fraud.

The judge is now considering how much the Trumps will have to pay in damages for the profits they’ve allegedly garnered through fraudulent business practices, including inflating Trump’s worth on financial statements.

The attorney general is seeking to prove six additional claims:

The attorney general is also seeking to ban the Trumps from doing business in New York.

The trial saw a slew of fireworks, including the judge imposing two fines on Donald Trump totaling $15,000 for violating his gag order forbidding anyone from commenting about his staff. Trump had repeatedly criticized Engoron’s law clerk.

Before testifying, Donald Trump had attended court for several days, where he attacked New York Attorney General Letitia James, the judge, and the case against him.

He did the same when he took the stand earlier this week with lengthy speeches during his testimony that sparked multiple admonishments from the judge.

Trump’s attorneys have indicated they would finish their defense by mid-December.

Donald Trump Jr. has arrived at court in New York where he is expected to be the first defense witness to be called as Trump’s attorneys begin presenting their side in their civil fraud trial Monday.

He waived to the cameras as he walked up the stairs into the courthouse.

Trump Jr. is a co-defendant, along with his father, his brother Eric, and their organization in the civil fraud trial. 

The New York Attorney General’s office rested its case last week.

Donald Trump Jr. will be back on the stand Monday as the defense’s first witness in the New York civil fraud trial.

Trump Jr. and his brother Eric Trump are co-defendants, along with their father, the Trump Organization, and several company executives.

The $250 million lawsuit accuses Trump Jr. and Eric Trump of knowingly participating in a scheme to inflate their father’s net worth to obtain financial benefits like better loans and insurance policy terms.

In a deposition taken last year, Trump Jr. distanced himself from the financial statementsJudge Arthur Engoron had already ruled to be fraudulent in a summary judgment before the trial began.

“I had no real involvement in the preparation of the Statement of Financial Condition and don’t really remember ever working on it with anyone,” Trump Jr. said.

Donald Trump Jr. said he relied on accountants: While answering questions from the prosecution earlier this month, Trump Jr. repeatedly said he relied on his accountants and was not involved with the preparations of financial statements for his father, even though he signed them as a trustee of his father’s revocable trust.

He testified that he didn’t draft the financial statements, and when he certified them as a trustee, he relied on the Trump Organization accounting and legal teams that he said assured him they were accurate to sign.

The attorney general’s office and Trump’s lawyers got into a lengthy back-and-forth over attorney-client privilege after questions emerged on what steps the Trump Organization had taken once the attorney general’s investigation into the company began in 2019.

Some internal policies and methodologies “have been bolstered” since the investigation began, Trump Jr. said. One of those changes, he said, was hiring a chief financial officer who is a certified public accountant.

When Donald Trump launches his defense Monday against allegations that he, his adult sons and his business defrauded lenders and insurers to enrich themselves, the first witness his lawyers will call is the former president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., as they aim to convince the judge that they didn’t intentionally do anything wrong.

Trump Jr., a defendant in the case, testified earlier this month when he was called by New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office, which filed the fraud lawsuit.

Under oath, he denied any role in the preparation of his father’s financial statements and said he consulted with lawyers and accountants before he signed off on the statements as trustee of his father’s trust and certified their accuracy annually to banks that loaned them millions of dollars. The Trumps have also argued that the banks were happy to have their business.

Trump’s lawyers, launching their case in the seventh week of the trial, are recalling some of the state’s witnesses as they present their defense to the allegations.

In addition to Trump Jr., Trump attorneys have said they are likely to call back Eric Trump and the former president, both of whom also previously testified.

Trump’s argument: The thrust of the Trump defense is that the financial statements were not misleading and that different people can come up with different values for the same property.

The defense has argued that there was no intent to defraud banks or insurers, in part because the Trump family relied on accountants, and that any differences in values on the properties were not meaningful.

Trump’s team has argued the financial statements were not important to the decisions by lenders to loan money or by insurers to underwrite policies. Moreover, they argue no banks lost any money and none have claimed they were defrauded or misled by the financial statements.

When Trump Jr. takes the stand, he will be questioned by attorneys representing the Trump family and business. That will allow greater leeway in the kinds of questions and answers he can give than when he was quizzed by lawyers for the state. It will also open him up to cross-examination by the state’s lawyers.

Read more about Trump’s civil fraud trial here.