The fraud trial against Donald Trump entered its second day with more detailed accounting issues, and in today’s session the testimony of a former accountant who worked for the Trump Organization and who claimed that it hid relevant documents from him to prepare his statements stood out. financial.
The first witness, called yesterday by the Prosecutor’s Office and who continued on the stage today, was Donald Bender, an accountant from the Mazars firm, hired for years by the Trump Organization and by the former president himself, and who previously testified in the criminal case. against the company for tax evasion in Manhattan.
A few meters away, former President Trump listened attentively, who appeared again without being required in court and sat at the defense table next to his lawyer Christopher Kise, making comments in a low voice and sometimes shaking his head to inside, in an exasperated gesture.
The second day of the fraud trial against Trump, his two eldest children, his company and two partners, in which six charges related to illegalities are being settled and which will last about three months, generated less expectation than yesterday: some isolated protester was seen and the courtroom was half empty.
Contradictions and objections
A key moment was when Bender admitted to prosecutor Kevin Wallace that the Trump Organization did not provide him with “all the documents necessary to compile” the company’s annual financial information, specifically real estate “appraisals,” despite saying he had requested them.
This contradicts the commitments that appeared in a document signed by the financial chief, Allen Weisselberg, and the vice president, Donald Trump Jr. – administrators of Trump’s trust during his presidential period – and in which they assured “not to knowingly hide records “relevant financials.”
Bender indicated yesterday that as an accountant for the company – between 2009 and 2018 – he prepared financial condition statements generally using the figures given to him in the company, without reviewing them, and today the prosecutor presented a valuation of Trump Tower at 631 million dollars made internally.
“Did Mazars use any procedure to check if those 631 million were correct?” the prosecutor insisted, to which the witness gave ambiguous answers and finally acknowledged that they were not.
The interrogation generally focused on the content of documents and spreadsheets, but was interrupted by several defense objections, which the judge always rejected, regarding the statute of limitations of the charges against him and the validity of the evidence used. by the Prosecutor’s Office.
In that sense, Trump left the room yesterday thinking that “80%” of the case could be dismissed because it referred to events prior to 2014, which would be out of time due to a decision by an appeals court, as he wrote on his network social Truth Social, but Judge Arthur Engoron this morning told the former president that he was wrong.
There is also movement in the pauses
The interrogation of Bender by the Prosecutor’s Office concluded today around noon, after which the judge ordered a break for lunch before giving Trump’s defense their turn to question the witness, but the recess was extended – without explanations – until leave only a couple of hours before the end of the day.
Trump was less talkative today than yesterday with the press, but he again attacked the case, the prosecutor and Judge Engoron, whom he attacked in a long email sent by his campaign during the break, and in which he accuses the veteran judge of being a donor to the Democratic Party and “far left.”
He also published in Truth Social a message, later deleted, in which he romantically linked Engoron’s secretary (he gave her name) with a Democratic senator and accused her of undertaking political persecution against him, something that seemed to greatly upset the judge.
According to accredited media, the former president entered and left the courtroom several times during the break, in which some deliverymen were seen bringing more than a dozen pizzas to the court, and the parties appeared to meet behind closed doors with the judge, without the reason was known.
It was clear upon return: Engoron denounced as “unacceptable and inappropriate” the “personal attacks” against its court staff and issued a “gag order” against “all parties,” by which it may sanction future messages containing references to the workers.
2023-10-04 00:34:57
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