Allen Weisselberg, Trump's loyal ex-CFO, calls tripling the size of Trump's penthouse in financial records a 'minor' mistake

• Trump's loyal ex-CFO, Allen Weisselberg, began court-ordered testimony in the NY civil fraud trial.
• The former top numbers man is not quite half-way through collecting $2 million in severance.

When New York Attorney General Letitia James makes a list of Donald Trump's alleged hyper-exaggerations of his worth, his tripling of the square footage of his triplex penthouse in Manhattan's Trump Tower is typically at the top.

On Tuesday, Trump Organization's ex-CFO, Allen Weisselberg, took the stand as James' civil fraud trial began its second week – and he suffered some hard grilling concerning James' favorite Trumpian tall tale.

Throughout the morning, as the AG's civil fraud trial began its second week in a Manhattan courtroom, Weisselberg repeatedly minimized the significance of the triplex to Trump's larger fiscal picture, and insisted "I don't recall" to seemingly a third or more of the questions lobbed his way.

First, though, came two little bombshells.

Weisselberg testified early on in the morning that he is still in the midst of pocketing the installments of a $2 million severance package for his work at Trump Org. The money is being doled out over two years, with the final five payments due next month and then quarterly throughout next year.

Weisselberg was earning a $1.4 million salary last year, when he was accused of "shading the truth" on Trump's behalf in the Manhattan district attorney's payroll tax-fraud case against Trump Org.

Second, the judge in the non-jury trial was shown a 1994 real estate record that accurately listed the triplex's square footage at 10,996 – not the 30,000 square feet that Trump claimed in official net-worth statements in 2012 through 2016.

This potentially Trump-incriminating document, projected on a courtroom screen, was signed by the former president personally. Testimony revealed the document sat in a file cabinet right outside Weisselberg's office at Trump Org headquarters in Trump Tower, where, presumably, anyone could have checked it to confirm the triplex's size.

"I just don't recall whether there were any," Weisselberg said when asked by assistant attorney general Louis M. Solomon if there were file cabinets containing real estate records and appraisals just outside his office door. Solomon heads the AG's real estate finance enforcement section.

See the Trump Tower condominium declaration, shown in court Tuesday, that Trump signed in 1994 and again in 1997 – showing that, at least back then, he knew how big his own triplex apartment was.

Weisselberg repeatedly testified that he did not recall certain details of how that now-admitted error wound up included in five years of financial statements, which Trump used to win better interest rates from banks.

Trump Org executives rushed out the still-uncorrected 2016 net-worth statement even though, four days prior, a reporter from Forbes had asked multiple executives about the tripling of the triplex's size, Solomon tried to show through Weisselberg's testimony.

"As you sit here today, you don't recall if you did anything, or you directed anyone to do anything," to correct the square footage with Forbes or in the 2016 statement, Solomon asked Weisselberg.

"I don't recall," Weisselberg answered. "I look at the big numbers," he explained.

Asked if, once put on the alert by Forbes, he ever thought to quickly and conveniently check the files right outside his door, Weisselberg answered, "I don't recall."

James, who has so far attended each day of trial, has accused Trump of larding his annual financial statements with as much as $3.6 billion a year in exaggerations of his worth.

The fraudulent, 20-page statements were used for a decade by Deutsche Bank and other lenders to award and maintain some $400 million in loans on better terms than if so much of the collateral wasn't a fiction, James has alleged.

The ex-CFO downplayed the triplex square-footage error as "minor," even though in each of those years it added between $100 million and $200 million of what James calls fictitious worth to his then-boss's bottom line.

"I never focused on it," Weisselberg told the state's lawyer. "It was a de minimus asset," he said of the penthouse. "That was never a concern of mine."

James has called Trump's valuing of his triplex "absurd," noting that the $327 million valuation listed for the property in a 2015 financial statement was three times higher than any other apartment in New York had sold for at that time – including much newer and nicer ones.

She is seeking to permanently ban Trump and top Trump Org executives – including sons Donald Trump, Jr. and Eric Trump – from running a business in New York, along with other penalties.

Last month, the judge, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, issued a pre-trial finding that Trump committed fraud for years by issuing widely misleading net-worth statements to banks, insurers, and others.

Engoron also imposed what experts call the "corporate death penalty," ordering that all of the former president's licenses to do business in New York be revoked, and that a receiver be appointed "to manage the dissolution" of, meaning sell, the canceled companies.

This story was updated to reflect later developments.