Judge Arthur Engoron showed clear signs of losing his temper and threatened to expel Donald Trump from the courtroom, with the former US president repeatedly resorting to long, addendum-filled answers to questions put to him during the hearing on trial on Monday.
Engoron urged Trump’s lawyer, Chris Casey, to “control him,” warning that “if you can’t do it, I will; I will,” the Guardian reported.
Trump will appear in a New York court on Monday to defend himself in a civil lawsuit that poses a grave threat to his real estate empire and is the first of a series of hearings that will hamper his return to power. White House.
The 77-year-old billionaire faced the judge, whom Trump had previously showered with nasty adjectives like “deranged,” “hateful” and “rogue,” since the trial began on October 2.
The 74-year-old judge then responded by imposing two fines on Trump, the first $5,000 and the second $10,000, for violating the partial gag order imposed on him after attacking the court clerk on social media.
What angered Engoron this time was after a question asked of Trump about the valuation of property no. 40 on Wall Street, as the latter insisted, in a lengthy response, that the valuation was very low.
The former president said: “The tower is ideal to be turned into apartments, and I have the right to do it, and sooner or later we or someone else will do it, and that is the highest and best use, and in this case 550 million dollars is a very low figure.”
He continues: “Just look at the photo of the building (..) and you will say that this is worth much more.”
But Engoron turned to the lawyer, saying: “Mr. Casey, this was a simple question (your answer) was yes or no (..) The question was whether you believed this number was accurate. We listened to another speech” .
Engoron threatened to expel Trump from the room and urged Casey to control his client.
On the other hand, Casey thought it was right for the judge to listen to Trump’s speech, but Engoron responded with annoyance: “No, I don’t want to hear everything he wants to say (..) He has a lot to say, and it has nothing to do do with chance or with questions,” according to the Guardian.
“I would ask the court to answer all questions,” Casey responded.
The lawyer then cited Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, noting that the former president’s testimony in the case undermines those efforts.
Finally, when the questions came again, Trump complained: “This is a completely unfair trial… and I hope the public will watch it.”
Case details
After a 4-year investigation, the Democratic attorney general filed a civil lawsuit against the management of the Trump Organization, accusing Trump and his two sons of inflating the organization’s assets by billions of dollars to obtain bank loans and insurance contracts for better conditions.
The Trump Organization includes a large number of companies that operate skyscrapers, offices, luxury hotels, residences and golf courses around the world.
It seeks a $250 million fine and a ban on the Republican billionaire and his children from running companies.
Trump underwent two hearings during the investigation into the case, the first on August 10, 2022 and the second on April 13, 2023.
In excerpts from his first testimony, he described the proceedings as “the largest and most brutal manhunt in the history of our country,” before remaining silent.
During his second testimony, he denied having committed any fraud and found the case essentially reflected “madness”, stressing that the banks “made enormous sums of money” by dealing with him.
The outcome of the trial is not expected to be in Trump’s favor, as the judge found before it began that the prosecution had presented “conclusive evidence that between 2014 and 2021 the defendants overstated the assets” of the group of “812 million (a) 2.2 billion dollars.” “For years, in Donald Trump’s annual budget.
Following “repeated frauds,” he ordered the liquidation of companies that manage these assets, such as Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York, skyscrapers in Manhattan and the Seven Springs Palace in suburban New York.
This ruling has remained on hold pending appeal, but if it is tried and implemented, Trump will lose control over part of his real estate empire, as he has thrown himself into politics by promoting his image as a successful real estate developer.
For a month, Trump continued to attend the sessions, taking the opportunity to put himself in the victim’s shoes, denouncing in front of the cameras a judicial conspiracy against him.
On the merits of the case, Trump’s lawyers reject any fraud, considering that real estate valuations are subjective and that the banks lending to the Trump Organization did not lose money.
This trial is only the first of a busy judicial agenda that awaits Trump, criminally accused in 4 other cases, and will appear from March 2024 before the federal judiciary in Washington on charges of conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential elections . .
But so far the charges against him have not dented his dominance in opinion polls in the race to secure the Republican Party’s nomination for the presidential election.