The testimony's over, but the acrimony lingers on at the Trump fraud trial.
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The testimony's over, but the acrimony lingers on at Donald Trump's civil fraud trial in New York.
Sarcasm and frustration practically drip from the latest filing in the case by the New York attorney general's office, which complains about the Trump team's "antics," "maneuvers," and "sound bites."
"The most ineffective team of experts that Defendants' money can buy," the Monday filing snarks of Trump's more than $2 million in paid witnesses.
The three-page filing is the state attorney general's fed-up response to Trump's latest request for what's called a "directed verdict."
That's when a judge, overwhelmed by a lack of evidence, skips way ahead — forgoing any more testimony, or, in this case, the still-pending closing briefs and arguments — and hands an early win to the defendants.
In a speedy denial issued Monday afternoon, the judge who has presided over the case for three years, both pretrial and at trial, agreed.
"All that his testimony proved is that for a million or so dollars, some experts will say whatever you want them to say," New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron wrote of Trump's star expert, New York University professor Eli Bartov.
This is the sixth time in nearly three months of trial that Trump's team has asked for a directed verdict.
Each time, Engoron either reserved judgement on the request and continued the trial, or denied the motion outright.
Procedurally, the latest request "makes zero sense," the AG's filing says, "coming after Defendants have already made five prior directed verdict motions during the trial, two of which were 'denied' and another of which was 'absolutely denied.'"
The words "denied" and "absolutely denied" are the judge's. The italics and ire belong to the AG, or more precisely, her special counsel, Andrew Amer.
"The motion, for the reasons explained below, as with many of the Defendants' courtroom antics and maneuvers during the course of this trial, is nothing more than a political stunt designed to provide Mr. Trump, his co-defendants, and their counsel with sound bites for press conferences, Truth Social posts, and cable news appearances," the AG writes.
As just one "sound bites" example, on November 9, Trump attorney Alina Habba told viewers of Fox & Friends that her team was about to seek a directed verdict, at that point their third.
"Today is a really important day," she told viewers.
The more evidence presented at trial, the worse things got for Trump, Amer argues.
"It is logically impossible for the Defendants' Motion to have greater merit now based on a larger evidentiary record than their prior failed motions had," the state lawyer writes.
"Unlike a fine Bordeaux, Defendants' case for a directed verdict does not improve with age."
Lawyers for Trump, who had filed their request on Friday, didn't immediately return Business Insider's request for comment.
Brittainy Newman/AP
Amer goes on to call this latest directed-verdict request "beyond frivolous," since it relies "on arguments the Court has already rejected," or which are contradicted by the evidence, or which "have no record support at all."
The judge has already found that based on pretrial evidence alone, Trump, his company, and his top executives committed fraud by hiking his net worth by billions of dollars a year in a decade's worth of financial statements he sent to banks and insurers.
The civil trial, in which closing briefs and arguments are due next month, is to determine if that already-proven fraud further rose to the level of criminality, and what the final penalties will be.
A criminal conspiracy has now been proven, Amer wrote Monday.
"There is ample evidence of agreements to inflate asset values among and between the defendants to support a conspiracy," he wrote.
Each year, Trump's ex-CFO, Allen Weisselberg, and his ex-comptroller, Jeffrey McConney, agreed to use the inflated values, he wrote.
Between 2011 and 2015, Trump approved the use of those values, he wrote. Trump had moved to the White House when the 2016 net-worth statement was issued, and from then until 2021, those inflated values were approved by his trustees, Donald Trump, Jr., and Weisselberg, Amer wrote.
And in 2021, Donald Trump, Jr., and Eric Trump "together reviewed and approved the methods used to inflate the value of certain golf clubs," he wrote, referring to what the AG's office has called a "deceptive strategy" of secretly adding a Trump "brand premium" to the clubs' value.
"Nor does any of the testimony from the most ineffective team of experts that Defendants' money can buy change the analysis," Amer writes, taking a shot at Trump's pricey expert witnesses.
The Trump experts had claimed that property values are subjective.
"So what?" Amer asks in response.
The trial was never about whether the assets were objectively correctly valued, he adds.
Rather, the trial was about whether Trump intentionally hiked his numbers, "thereby creating false business records, issuing false financial statements, and committing insurance fraud," he writes, referring to the state criminal statutes at hand.
"As the People will demonstrate in their post-trial brief and closing argument, Defendants did these illegal acts and must now disgorge their ill-gotten gains," he concludes, referring to the more than $250 million in penalties that the state is seeking.
"To the extent the Court deems it necessary at all to address Defendants' sixth attempt to obtain a directed verdict," Amer concludes in one final barb, "it should summarily deny the Motion."
The judge spent just three pages on turning Trump down, and signaled that there will be a financial price to pay.
Trump's arguments that the AG has no right to interfere in what should, if anything, be a dispute between borrower and lender "personify frivolity," the judge writes.
"It is well-settled that the State has an interest in protecting the integrity of the marketplace," he writes.
"Disgorgment is the return of 'ill-gotten gains,'" Engoron also writes in his decision.
"If you pay a lower interest rate on a loan by overstating the value of any of your assets, thus lowering the perceived risk to the lender, your gains are ill-gotten," he writes.
Trump had argued that he never missed a loan payment, and that Deutsche Bank made millions in interest by lending him more than $400 million over the years, but that's besides the point, Engoron added.
It "does not mean that they were not damaged by lending at lower interest rates than they otherwise would have," he wrote.
Closing briefs in the trial are due January 5 and closing arguments are scheduled for January 11. The judge has said he will reach a verdict by the end of January.
This story was updated to reflect the judge's decision.
