So where are we with Donald Trump's New York fraud trial? Let's catch up with Lawrence O'Donnell:
"When you think "construction guy"-- do you think Eric Trump? That's what he wants you to think when he said, "I'm an operator, I'm a construction guy. I build projects I don't focus on appraisals." That's what Eric Trump, witness #23 said under oath today in a Manhattan courtroom today as he answered questions in the civil fraud trial brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James against Donald Trump and his two co-defendant sons-- Donald Jr. and Eric. Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka avoided being a co-defendant because of the statute of limitations.
Eric Trump spent the day trying to say that he has no idea what any parts of the Trump business are worth even thought he has made many many public statements over the years about exactly that. The judge in the case has already ruled that the Trumps used fraudulent valuations of their assets-- and so each Trump who has taken the stand so far has tried has tried to avoid any connection to those fraudulent valuations. Eric Trump said under oath, "I never had anything to do with the statements of financial condition." But when he was shown emails indicating he was consulted about such valuations, he admitted "It appears that way." Donald Trump Jr. finished his testimony today before his younger brother Eric took the witness stand. Their father did not bother to come to the courtroom in their support today-- instead, he posted this; "So sad to see my sons being persucuted by a Trump-hating judge."
Donald Trump biographer Tim O'Brien (who won in court when he was sued by Trump) delivered his own assessment of the single most important witness in the trial so far-- that of Eric Trump:
"It's [all] just so absurd. You know, Eric Trump does not have callouses on his hands. Eric Trump has never labored in the hot sun on a highway making sure it's smooth, or on the driveway going to Bedminster [golf course] or wherever else he's talking about. And it sort of highlights the fact that in a family full of people who dissemble and are profoundly unsophisticated and ignorant, Eric Trump is unusually ignorant and unusually unsophisticated. They had someone on the stand today who once said, "We don't need to borrow money from banks-- we can get all the money we need from Russia."
And he is-- like the other Trump children--now in a court of law having years, months and days of dissembling tested against the documents, tested against his own testimony-- and he's left to his own devices, cause his father's not there. So all of these years of sitting at their father's knee and learning that you can try to spin the media, or try to spin the banks, or try to spin the taxman without being held accountable, is actually coming home to roost now in a courtroom-- and the father's not there. So good job, dad! You've led your children through life teaching them that they can try to get by on spin and they can try to get by on falsehoods. But at the end of the day, you're going to be left alone like everyone around Donald Trump is-- because loyalty is a one-way street in the Trump universe and he's even leaving his son hanging here.
But it's also (I think) another moment in which you have this accrual of information that's all consistent across every day of testimony-- that the Trumps routinely were not truthful about how much their assets were worth. They were not ever really truthful about the nature of their business-- and that's the core prosecution here. It's that they lied to banks; they lied to tax authorities about the value of what they owned-- and they're now being held accountable for it in a public forum. And they have the worst (the worst!) witness you could ever have in a scenario like that-- which is Eric. Who, even among his siblings (even among his siblings!) was routinely derided as being incapable and a bit of a doofus. And no one's around to back him up-- including Trump's own lawyers, and the father himself."
No comments:
Post a Comment