Everything Trump said outside the doors of his NY fraud trial is wrong. Here's why, point-by-point.
Dec 8, 2023, 08:17 IST
- Donald Trump is back speaking to reporters in the hallway outside his New York City fraud trial.
- He raged against the judge and insulted the state's attorney general.
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Donald Trump is back, in person, at his $250 million civil fraud trial in New York, where state Attorney General Letitia James hopes a judge will fine him at least $250 million for what a judge has already found were a decade's worth of bogus financial statements.
As usual when he visits the trial, Trump made a couple of speeches. And as usual, almost everything he said, beyond "Thank you very much, everybody," does not stand up to even the most basic fact-checking.
Here is Business Insider's point-by-point look at what he told reporters outside the trial on Thursday morning.
The case is a 'witch hunt'
Trump's cries of "bias" and "witch hunt" stretch back to the start of James' four-year pursuit of the former president. At one point, his lawyers even compiled an 11-page spreadsheet of her anti-Trump statements. But New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, the judge in the ongoing trial, has repeatedly slapped down Trump's claims that James, a Democrat, is out to get the leader of the Republican Party. On October 25, in rejecting a defense request for an immediate verdict in their favor, the judge protested that, "There's enough evidence in this case to fill this courtroom."
We already "won" in the appellate courts
The June 27, 2023, appellate decision that Trump referred to actually denied Trump's motion to dismiss the attorney general's massive lawsuit, which is the trial's underlying case.
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The only win for Trump's side was that the appellate judges removed from the lawsuit all alleged frauds committed prior to 2014 and, in some instances, prior to 2016, saying they were too old under the state's statute of limitations.
Really, though, I "won"
Again, according to New York's Appellate Division, First Department, no.
OK, I won about "90%'"
There is no 90% win for Trump's side. The January appellate decision actually left the entirety of the state's fraud claims in place with the sole exception of removing Ivanka Trump as a defendant, in a nod to her having left the Trump Organization after the 2016 election, to work for her father's administration.
The banks "love us" and there are "no victims"
It is true that Trump never defaulted on the loans in question, and that he never missed a payment or even paid late, according to testimony by the state's own witness.But the attorney general and Engoron have said that this is beside the point because you can't lie to banks in financial documents, period.And there are still victims, the state alleges.In relying on Trump's exaggerations, Deutsche Bank lost out on $168 million in interest payments they would have otherwise charged him between 2014 and 2023, they allege.
Letitia James lets people get murdered "all over the streets"
"Lunatic" is one of Trump's most frequent James insults, including during the trial's third week, when he claimed "people" have recorded her "ranting and raving like a lunatic." Other favorite insults for James include "racist" and, strangely, "Peek-a-boo."As for letting people get murdered, overall crime, and especially violent crime, is actually down in New York City, according to NYPD statistics. Looking at the first half of 2023, shootings are down 24.7 percent over the first half of 2022, the NYPD said July.The judge "ruled against me" before the case even started
Trump is referring to Engoron's pre-trial ruling, from late September, which was based on the record of more than two years of pretrial litigation that he personally presided over.The ruling found Trump inflated his worth to banks and insurers by at least $2 billion a year in each of a decade's worth of annual financial statements.The judge said Mar-a-Lago estate was only worth $18 million
This has been one of Trump's most frequently repeated misstatements concerning the judge and the fraud trial. In fact, the judge never valued Mar-a-Lago at $18 million. The judge has, though, referred to prior assessments of the property by Palm Beach officials that ranged from $18 million to $27.6 million between 2011 and 2021.
Trump told reporters much of the same throughout Thursday
Trump made six brief statements, in total, to reporters positioned outside the courtroom doors on Thursday, mostly repeating that the case is unfair, that James is out to get him, and that the banks "loved me."
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Trump raised a few new issues, though, as the day went on.He claimed without evidence that New York's state-level lawsuit and the ongoing Manhattan hush-money prosecution were somehow prompted by the Biden administration. "The White House is controlling district attorneys," Trump told reporters during Thursday's morning break in testimony. "In fact," he told reporters, in a convoluted but apparent reference to Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, whose prosecution is scheduled for trial in March, "at the district attorney's office, they put one of their top people — the DOJ put one of their top people right under the attorney general, put them into the district attorney's office, also put a man into the state attorney general's office, Letitia James' office."Trump appears to have been referring to Matthew Colangelo, who over the past few years has worked for James, the DOJ, and Bragg, in that order. This idea that Colangelo's career path somehow proves his fraud trial "is coming straight from the White House" was not further explained. But Trump repeated the claim without providing evidence throughout his statements to the press Thursday."And this is coming right out of the White House," he claimed, without evidence. "Because I'm beating Biden by a lot." Trump is indeed beating Biden, albeit by narrower margins than "a lot."