Donald Trump Jr. is scheduled to speak Wednesday at Civil fraud trial in New York pitting her family and namesake company against New York Attorney General Letitia James.
The former president’s eldest son is the first of four Trumps expected to testify at the trial. Eric Trump, Ivanka Trump and their father Donald Trump are also expected to be sworn in to testify under oath in the coming days.
Their company, the former president and his two adult sons, are accused of engaging in a fraudulent scheme that netted them hundreds of millions of dollars by falsely inflating Donald Trump’s real estate valuations and wealth, as part agreements with banks and insurers. Ivanka Trump was named as a defendant when the state’s lawsuit was filed in September 2022, but a New York court later dismissed the lawsuit against her for missing the statute of limitations.
Trump Jr. is a key decision-maker at the Trump Organization, where he serves as executive vice president. He also helps manage a trust created for his father’s estate after the 2016 presidential election. Both roles put him at the center of the state’s fraud cases.
Trump Jr. is expected to speak late Wednesday morning or early afternoon. The judge did not allow television cameras to film the trial, meaning his interrogation will not be broadcast live. CBS News has reporters on hand to witness his testimony, and this story will be updated as he speaks.
Lawyers for the attorney general described Trump Jr. as part of a group of senior executives who were privy to confidential details about the company’s finances.
“The documents obtained by (the Attorney General) establish that Donald Trump, Jr. received his own memoranda discussing the general financial condition of the Trump Organization and detailed analyzes on the performance of specific assets,” they wrote in a file from January 2022. case.
His work as a business executive involved many of the properties and transactions that are the subject of the case, including the financing and development of the Trump International Hotel & Tower, in Chicago, and the Trump International Golf Links in Aberdeen, in Scotland, as well as commercial leasing. deals in properties such as Trump Tower and 40 Wall Street in Manhattan.
After his father was elected president, Trump Jr. signed so-called financial disclosure statements — documents that the state said were at the heart of the fraud scheme. The judge in the case has already ruled that the defendants engaged in fraud. He agreed with James’ office that the statements, which described Trump’s wealth as billions of dollars more than was true, were passed to banks, insurers and others.
Trump Jr. and his siblings were involved in these statements, at least in a limited way, even before their father was elected, according to a witness in the case. As the former president looked on, shaking his head in apparent disbelief, his former lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen testified Oct. 25 that the three Trump descendants were sometimes consulted by another executive at the company that oversaw the production of the annual declaration.
The defendants have all denied any wrongdoing in the case, and the Trumps have all accused James — a Democratic elected official — of pursuing them for political purposes.
“They set up the game so it’s always lose/lose in these blue states. If you don’t respect their rhetoric, they will target you,” Trump Jr. tweeted on September 26, after the pre-trial ruling of the Judge Arthur Engron. the defendants are responsible for fraud.
They also accused Engoron himself of bias.
“Are we still pretending that there is even a pretense of objectivity on the part of these judges,” Donald Trump Jr. tweeted the same day, regarding Engoron and a federal judge overseeing a criminal case against the former president in Washington, DC.
The lawsuit against the Trumps and their company seeks $250 million and several sanctions designed to limit their ability to do business in New York, including permanently banning Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump from holding office manager or administrator in any sector whatsoever. business in the state.