Former President Donald Trump is set to take the witness stand in a New York courtroom Monday, testifying in a high-stakes civil case that could lead to the dismantling of his sprawling business empire.
“I know he’s very fired up to be here and he thinks this is one of the most incredible injustices he’s ever seen, and it truly is,” his son and fellow defendant Eric Trump told reporters Friday, after he finished testifying in the $250 million civil fraud trial.
Trump will be grilled under oath by a lawyer from state Attorney General Letitia James’ office in front of state Judge Arthur Engoron — a judge he has repeatedly mocked on his social media platform, Truth Social. In recent days, he has posted that Engoron is “crazy, totally unhinged, and dangerous” and a “Trump hating judge” who is a “disgrace to the legal profession.” In one post, he said Engoron “should be thrown off the ‘Bench’ as a giant Embarrassment to New York State!”
There’s no jury, so Engoron will be the one who ultimately decides the outcome of the trial, including whether Trump, his sons and his company should pay any penalties.
Trump’s previous sworn testimony related to the case has already been problematic for him.
He was first deposed while James was investigating the case in August 2022 and invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination close to 450 times.
He was deposed again in April after James filed her bombshell suit alleging that he and his company inflated their assets to the tune of billions of dollars to get more favorable rates from banks and insurers, and his answers there are likely to be a guidepost about how he’ll be questioned Monday.
Trump spent about seven hours in the deposition answering questions from the attorney general’s office and disavowing responsibility for the annual statements of financial condition, which say “Donald J. Trump is responsible for the preparation and fair presentation of the financial statement in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America.”
The AG’s office maintains he strayed far from accepted accounting principles, but Trump testified that he trusted the accountants who compiled the statements and that in many instances he thought his properties were being undervalued.
Trump told James’ office that at trial, “we’re going to have numbers that are going to knock your socks off.”
“Your numbers are so incorrect. They’re actually so low, your numbers,” he said.
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Engoron cited some of Trump’s deposition testimony in his summary judgment finding him liable for fraud before the trial on Oct. 2.
“The defenses Donald Trump attempts to articulate in his sworn deposition are wholly without basis in law or fact,” he said.
In one instance that has provoked Trump’s ire, the judge took issue with Trump’s valuation of his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, noting that the Palm Beach County assessor appraised its market value to be $18 million to $27.6 million from 2011 to 2021, while Trump’s balance sheet put its value at $426 million to $612 million. Trump, who has repeatedly complained about Engoron’s citing the $18 million figure, maintained that the property is worth much more and that it could be considered even more valuable if it were to be sold as a private residence.
Trump also went off on rally-style tangents during his deposition. Speaking about offshore windmills in Scotland, he said: “They’re probably killing whales, which are washing up to shore, which nobody has ever seen before. Many whales are coming in where they’re doing it up in New England. No, I’m not a fan of wind.”
Trump took the stand once very briefly in the fraud trial while he was in court for his former lawyer Michael Cohen’s testimony. Engoron asked Trump whether he was referring to the judge’s law clerk when he complained to reporters about “a person who’s very partisan sitting alongside” the judge. Engoron had barred Trump from talking about his court staff after Trump smeared the clerk on social media.
Trump said under oath he was talking about Cohen, but Engoron found his answer “not credible” and fined him $10,000.
The last time Trump testified in depth during a trial was in a civil case in Chicago in 2013. The Associated Press described his testimony at the time as “sometimes prickly, sometimes boastful.”
“I don’t want to be braggadocious: I build great buildings,” he said during his two days on the stand in the case, in which he was accused of duping an 87-year-old woman in a condo bait-and-switch at a Trump building in Chicago. The jury found in his favor.
Trump also is set to stand trial in four criminal cases next year: the federal classified documents case; the Fulton County, Georgia, election interference case; the Washington, D.C., election interference case; and the Manhattan district attorney’s inquiry into hush money payments to Stormy Daniels.
At least one other former president has testified in court after having left office — Teddy Roosevelt did so twice.
The 26th president was a plaintiff in a civil suit against a Michigan newspaper that had accused him of being a drunk in 1913. The second was a civil case in which Roosevelt was sued by a New York Republican Party boss he’d accused of being corrupt. Roosevelt won both cases.
