- Tempers flared Thursday during a heated sidebar discussion at Trump's fraud trial in New York.
- Lawyers for both sides could be heard insulting each other in raised voices.
Attorney tempers flared Thursday at the Trump civil fraud trial in New York, where a quiet sidebar discussion erupted into cross-accusations of rudeness and disrespectfulness.
"Be more respectful!" a lawyer for state Attorney General Letitia James could be heard telling Donald Trump's lead lawyer, Christopher Kise.
"No," Kise could be heard answering.
"That," responded the state's lawyer, Colleen Faherty, "was rude."
The entirety of the sidebar was off the record, meaning a court stenographer did not take notes as lawyers for the state and members of Trump's defense team squared off at the judge's bench before the day's testimony began.
But a fuller picture of the sidebar emerged from what could be heard from the audience of the Manhattan courtroom and from accounts from two sources who spoke to Insider on the condition they be identified only as people familiar with the dispute.
The sides were called to the bench of New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron to discuss a letter sent by the AG's office to the judge that was made public earlier in the morning, the sources said.
In the letter, the state accused the Trump Organization of failing to turn over emails concerning Trump's triplex apartment. It said the emails have been newly brought to light as missing from the trial evidence, and should have been among the corporate records turned two years ago over in response to an AG subpoena.
The AG's side requested in the letter that the Trump Organization be ordered to submit to a search for the allegedly missing emails. Kise, the former president's lawyer, kicked off the sidebar by protesting that such a search would potentially derail the trial, the sources said.
Kise twice ignored questions posed to him by the judge's principal law clerk, Allison Greenfield, and at one point snapped that he was only taking questions from the judge, the sources said.
Kise then accused the AG's side of having an ulterior motive for pursuing the emails, even suggesting that the state was fishing for evidence it could use in examining Trump fixer-turned-foe Michael Cohen on the witness stand next week.
The audible part of the argument happened soon after that.
Faherty, the only other woman at the sidebar besides the judge's law clerk, pushed back that there was no ulterior motive. And Kise, the two sources said, responded with a suggestion that Faherty lacked the intelligence to have known if there was such a motive.
That's when Faherty could be heard saying, "Be more respectful!"
"No," Kise answered, not missing a beat. When Faherty then answered, "That was rude," the judge could be seen raising both hands as if to gesture that the parties quiet — and calm — down.
Asked for comment after the blowup, Kise declined, responding only by saying that he hadn't, in fact, been accused of being rude. This, despite the audible dialogue having been heard, word-for-word, by multiple reporters in the audience.
The trial, at which the state seeks to permanently bar Trump and his real-estate company from doing business in New York, is in its third week.
Tensions between the two sides have boiled over repeatedly in open court at the non-jury trial. On Wednesday, lawyers for both sides raised their voices during a heated dispute over a former Trump property appraiser's testimony.