4 things we learned from Trump’s testimony in the NY fraud trial

Donald Trump’s many legal problems led to a historic scene Monday: a former president testifying under oath in his own civil fraud trial in New York.

New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) is suing Trump and others, including his two adult sons, seeking $250 million. The judge in the case has already found that Trump committed fraud by intentionally overvaluing his assets to secure more favorable financial terms. The judge has also moved to cancel Trump’s business certifications in the state.

The trial is to determine any additional actions the judge might take and what penalties Trump and the others could face.

It comes on top of other lawsuits Trump has faced, as well as four criminal indictments - two in federal court, one in New York and one in Georgia.

Below are some takeaways from Trump’s testimony.

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1. Trump’s wild testimony is not really about this trial

Shortly after he took the stand, the former president made clear that his performance was less about appealing to the judge who will decide his fate and more about politics, future court cases and potentially an appeal.

Trump began by delivering a series of broadsides against both the court and the prosecution.

“I’m sure the judge will rule against me, because he always rules against me,” he said of New York Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron, who previously found Trump liable for fraud and has fined Trump twice for attacking his law clerk.

Trump told the judge he knew “nothing about me,” before referring to James: “You believe this political hack back there.”

Trump ridiculed the prosecution’s case against him as being part of the purported “weaponization” of the government and courts.

He repeatedly tried to invoke defenses that the judge had already decided weren’t valid, including the “worthless clause” defense.

He called the trial “very unfair” and a “crazy trial.” He was repeatedly admonished for delivering political talking points rather than answering questions.

Early on, the judge implored Trump’s lawyers to control their client and even threatened to take action if Trump didn’t play by the rules. He at one point indicated he might just excuse Trump as a witness and “draw every negative inference that I can” from the testimony - the idea being he would assume Trump isn’t really defending himself because he can’t.

Indeed, Trump seemed to be effectively throwing in the towel on mounting a real defense of himself and instead attempting to turn the focus of the proceedings on the others. (Since this is a bench trial, there is no jury, giving Engoron significant power.)

Trump’s campaign at one point highlighted an out-of-context quote in which Engoron said he wasn’t there to hear what Trump had to say.

One way to read that is that Trump really thinks such proceedings are stacked against him. Another is that he recognizes he doesn’t really have great defenses - in this and perhaps in other cases - and he’s going to revert to a strategy of making life hell for those scrutinizing him, and continue to build a sense of persecution in his base.

“This is not a political rally,” Engoron said at one point while admonishing Trump. But to Trump, all of these cases are.

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2. Trump under oath was just Trump

Yet again, putting Trump under oath was no match for his propensity for hyperbole and falsehoods.

He continued to claim that his Mar-a-Lago property was worth between $1 billion and $1.5 billion. Experts find that claim highly dubious, and the county values it in the tens of millions. James’s office has also produced evidence calling into question Trump’s claim that the property is worth so much because it can be treated as “a large, unrestricted residential plot of land that could be valued on a per-acre basis and sold off in that fashion.”

(Trump also accused Engoron of valuing the property at just $18 million; in fact, Engoron merely cited an appraisal mentioning that amount.)

Trump repeatedly claimed that his properties were actually undervalued, saying, “The overall value is billions of dollars more than is in these statements, so whenever the bank gets them the bank is seeing a conservative statement.” Even the high estimates of Trump’s net worth are in the single-digit billions, meaning Trump was trying to inflate his wealth significantly - at a trial that was about his fraudulent inflation of his wealth.

Trump tried to claim that there was effectively no victim here: “There was no loss of money. [The banks] made a lot of money, and everyone is trying to figure out why you’re doing it.” But a prosecution witness last week testified that Trump would have paid much higher interests rates if he hadn’t exaggerated his wealth, saving Trump and costing the banks about $168 million - money James has labeled ill-gotten gains.

He also distanced himself from his New York City penthouse having previously been valued as if it had 30,000 square feet, when in fact it was later acknowledged to have only 10,996. “They took 10,000 feet per floor, and they went times three,” he said, according to legal correspondent Adam Klasfeld. “But they didn’t take out elevator shafts and different things.” He added: “I thought the apartment was overvalued, but I never really looked at it.”

In fact, Trump himself had been using such numbers publicly, and they were changed after a 2017 Forbes exposé.

This was actually the second time Trump has taken the stand in this trial. In his first, brief appearance, he claimed comments he made didn’t violate a gag order because they weren’t about Engoron’s clerk.

Engoron found that Trump’s explanation was “not credible.”

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3. Trump is setting the tone for his other prosecutions

Regardless of what happens in this case or others, the scenes Monday surely crystallized Trump’s efforts - and success - in bulldozing the legal process.

Trump effectively turned a courtroom into a kind of circus that would most likely not be permitted if he didn’t have a political movement behind him and if this were a trial featuring a jury he could influence.

The testimony featured a dynamic similar to what took place in the back-and-forth over gag orders: Trump seemingly daring judges by saying things that wouldn’t be tolerated from other defendants, and the judge threatening to do something about it but otherwise seeming to bend over backward to avoid taking severe action.

Despite Engoron’s repeatedly admonishing Trump and urging his lawyers to get him under control, the judge mostly just tried to steer Trump while occasionally striking statements he deemed irrelevant.

Engoron at one point said he would defer to the attorney general’s office on whether it wanted to make more of an issue of Trump speechifying and not directly answering questions.

Part of what Trump accomplished, as noted, was setting a tone for his other cases, including the criminal ones. Nothing will come easy when you go after Trump.

And while it seems unlikely Trump would ever testify in his criminal cases, it’s become clear that this kind of thing can and will happen even without Trump on the stand. Late last week, the trial devolved into another scene when Trump’s lawyers tried to go after Engoron’s clerk, despite their client having been sanctioned for that.

You can bet the judges in the other cases are taking note of what’s happening in New York - and trying to avoid a repeat in their courtrooms.

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4. Letitia James returned Trump’s taunts

Trump’s other main foil Monday, besides Engoron, was James. And the attorney general wasn’t exactly a shrinking violet.

James delivered a statement before Trump’s testimony noting that he would attack her and the process but that “the only thing that matters is the facts and the numbers. And numbers, my friends, don’t lie.”

During his testimony, Trump said that James didn’t “know what 40 Wall Street” - one of his properties - was. James reportedly laughed at the statement in the courtroom. Her office later tweeted the remark while adding: “Don’t tell, I can see it from my office window.”

Nor were the lawyers prosecuting the case for James afraid to mix it up. At one point, Trump delivered an answer about how the disclaimer clause in his financial statements went on “forever.”

“That clause isn’t the only thing that goes on forever,” James’s counsel, Kevin Wallace, quipped in response.

James also delivered a statement after Trump’s testimony, criticizing him for trying to make a scene.

“Mr. Trump obviously can engage in all of these distractions, and that is exactly what he did,” James said, adding that Trump also engaged in name-calling.

“But I will not be bullied. I will not be harassed. This case will go on.”