Donald Trump backtracks on plan to testify Monday in NYC fraud trial – New York Daily News
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Donald Trump has nixed his plans to testify Monday in his civil fraud trial in New York.
He shared his change of heart in a rambling series of Sunday posts on his Truth Social platform.
“I have very successfully & conclusively testified in the corrupt … trial against me,” he wrote.
Trump also lashed out at Judge Arthur Engoron and state Attorney General Letitia James, the frequent targets of his wrath.
The 77-year-old former president testified in November in Manhattan Supreme Court. Often bringing a campaign-style approach to the proceedings, he’s insisted on his innocence even though Engoron determined he was guilty of the top fraud charge — that Trump and his underlings routinely exaggerated the value of his assets by as much as $2.2 billion in deals with banks and lenders to enrich themselves illegally — before the trial began.
Last week, Trump returned to the courtroom as a spectator, listening to the testimony of his defense team’s expert witness Eli Bartov. A professor of accounting at NYU’s Stern School of Business, Bartov argued that the value of buildings is inherently subjective.
“Our unassailable final expert witness has been so strong and irrefutable in his testimony,” Trump wrote in a second Truth Social post on Sunday.
Engoron is expected to rule on the AG’s remaining six claims — primarily relating to insurance fraud, falsifying records and the conspiracies underlying various elements of Trump’s scheme — and how much he and his associates must pay back by the end of next month. The AG is seeking to recover at least $300 million.
Trump has spent most of the trial criticizing Engoron and James, claiming they were operating a political persecution against him. The AG has mostly laughed off Trump’s accusations, while Engoron imposed a gag order on the former president.
“He rambled, he hurled insults,” James said after Trump’s first day of testimony. “At the end of the day, the documentary evidence demonstrated that, in fact, he falsely inflated his assets to basically enrich himself and his family.”
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