Trump Organization financial records are much like a pack of cigarettes, Donald Trump’s expert witness reportedly testified Thursday.
Eli Bartov compared the company's statements of financial condition — at the heart of Letitia James’ $250 million fraud lawsuit against the former president — to the nation’s leading cause of preventable disease, disability and death, according to legal analyst Lisa Rubin.
“He is testifying that the information in the accompanying footnotes should be heeded,” Rubin told her followers on X.
“It’s like a warning from the Surgeon General on a box of cigarettes, he explains.”
Bartov, an accounting professor at NYU, came to court to combat James’ claim that Trump defrauded lenders by inflating the value of his assets in the financial documents in question.
The professor argued the financial condition statements are subject to interpretation because there are different acceptable methods for assessing value under the accepted government standard, Rubin reports.
“If a person tells you valuation is objective,” Bartov reportedly said, “that person needs to have his head examined.”
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Bartov then argued that warnings detailed in the financial condition statements were directed at banks, or the very lenders James asserts were misled by Trump, who has denied wrongdoing, Rubin reports.
Rubin, a former litigator and analyst for MSNBC, noted one jarring problem with Bartov’s argument.
“Comparing the Trump Org. to a box of cigarettes is probably not the analogy the defense wanted,” she wrote.
