Trump's lawyers grill Donald Bender about his mental health history in an attempt to paint him as unreliable

• Donald Trump's lawyers went after accountant Donald Bender in court on Thursday.
• Bender prepared Trump's financial statements and claims he didn't realize he was misled.

Trump's lawyers try to paint his accountant as unreliable, or even mentally infirm, in Day 4 of his fraud trial.

Donald Trump's lawyers tried to put the mental health of his former accountant Donald Bender on trial Thursday as part of an effort to undermine the New York attorney general's fraud lawsuit against them.

Bender, a former accountant at Mazars who assembled the financial statements that Donald Trump provided to banks for years, has testified that he thought the valuation data the Trump Organization gave him was complete. The state claims that it was inflated by billions of dollars.

And one of Trump's lawyers, Jesus Suarez, zoomed in on a disclaimer in a document that Mazars had given to authorities. The document included a line that indicated the Bender's availability was contingent on his "physical and mental health."

Did you tell Mazars anything that would lead them to put this there? Suarez asked.

"No sir," Bender replied.

"You'd have to ask Mazars" why they included that line, he said.

Suarez kept pushing.

"I have had some health issues and … Mazars is aware of them," said Bender, who was sometimes hard to hear over protesters outside who were yelling about Trump. "My physical issues in the last few months, they were resolved within two weeks."

"I have no mental health issues," he said.

But Cliff Robert, an attorney for Donald Trump's sons Eric and Donald Jr., challenged Bender's recollection of his interactions with Jeff McConney, a longtime Trump Organization accountant.

Bender has said he asked McConney for appraisals of key Trump properties, but never put it in writing and never received them.

Robert asked Bender what, exactly, he said to McConney.

"The way I phrased it to Mr. McConney was, 'do you have any other appraisals?'" Bender said.

Robert said the use of the word "other" indicates that he already had one.

Bender said he actually had received appraisals for two Trump entities, TIHT Commercial and Trump Plaza Commercial.

Over the past few days, the question-and-answer sessions with Bender could become highly technical, with lawyers reading long sentences from accounting standards guides, or repetitive, with Bender being asked the same questions about years and years of reports.

At one point, when an accounting-specific meaning for the word "review" came up, Justice Arthur Elgoron invoked a legal dispute involving another ex-president.

"This is starting to sound like the interrogation of Bill Clinton: 'do you know what the definition of 'is' is?'" Elgoron cracked.

Bender is no stranger to the witness stand, having previously testified at the criminal trial of the Trump Organization in 2022. That case ended with a $1.6 million fine.

Attorney General Letitia James' office is seeking much more far-reaching punishment for Trump and his real-estate empire, including a suspension on their ability to do business in New York. She has said Trump overstated his wealth by billions so banks would lend.

Trump argues that he engaged in industry-standard puffery and banks knew better than to accept his financial statements at face value.