Donald Trump Jr. asked courtroom artist to make him 'look sexy' like an illustration of Sam Bankman-Fried
- "Make me look sexy," Donald Trump Jr. told a courtroom illustrator after he finished testifying Thursday.
- The ex-president's son pointed out an image of Sam Bankman-Fried as inspiration.
The eldest son of former President Donald Trump asked a courtroom artist to make him appear "sexy" in her illustration after he finished testifying Thursday about his lack of knowledge of his family company.
"He said, 'Make me look sexy,'" illustrator Jane Rosenberg told Insider.
According to Rosenberg — a famed courtroom artist who's drawn everyone with legal troubles from Tom Brady to Harvey Weinstein — the former first son offered a portrait of Sam Bankman-Fried as inspiration.
The alleged fraudster, who is currently awaiting a jury verdict in a courthouse around the corner from the Trump Organization trial, was the subject of a viral illustration this week. The image, which Trump Jr. told Rosenberg made him look like a "superstar," appears to have been generated with artificial intelligence software and doesn't resemble the work of courtroom illustrators who had been attending the trial.
"He said, 'Did you see the one they made of Sam Bankman-Fried? It made him look like a superstar.' And he pulled out his phone and showed me," Rosenberg said. "It's fake. It's AI."
Reuters first reported on Trump Jr.'s lecherous request for Rosenberg to make a "sexy" illustration.
The divorced father of five, who's currently engaged to conservative media figure Kimberly Guilfoyle, testified in his family's civil fraud trial over two days in New York state court. New York Attorney General Letitia James alleges that Donald Trump, his company, and several executives worked together to illegally falsify property valuations in order to defraud lenders and insurers. Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., both executives at the company, are co-defendants and testified this week.
On the witness stand, Trump Jr. said he had no involvement in preparing documents about the Trump Organization's finances, even though he signed off on them.
Rosenberg went to Bankman-Fried's courtroom in Manhattan federal court on Thursday afternoon to draw a sallow-faced Bankman-Fried. Jurors are weighing whether he laundered money and defrauded customers, investors, and lenders through a scheme where he allegedly siphoned money from customers of FTX, his cryptocurrency exchange, to Alameda Research, his crypto hedge fund.
US District Judge Lewis Kaplan finished reading jury instructions in his case shortly after 3 p.m., after which Bankman-Fried hurriedly spoke to his parents across the barrier to the public gallery before marshals whisked him away.
Jurors sent a note at around 3:45 p.m. to Kaplan saying they wanted to stay until past 8 p.m. to deliberate and requested car service home. Kaplan said they would get pizza for dinner.