The Trump Organization’s fraud trial reached a landmark Monday with testimony from former President Donald Trump, who expressed anger and hid behind a legal notice included in his company’s financial documents, a notice that had previously been rejected by a judge.

Trump finally sat on the witness stand after days of attending a trial that began Oct. 2 alleging wrongdoing related to corporate fraud, a $250 million settlement and a veto of his New York state business. , according to the prosecutor’s office.

After taking the oath of office before a judge, Trump testified for four hours; He appeared calm at first, but raised his tone in long answers as Judge Arthur Engoron grew increasingly irritated, reproaching him for making political “speeches” and urging the defense to “control” their client or push for his expulsion.

The former president refused to give easy answers to Deputy Prosecutor Kevin Wallace about the valuation of his assets in the financial documents on which the case is based, allegedly inflated to gain an advantage over banks and insurers, and even said the figures were higher. than on paper.

Even before the trial began, Engoron ruled that Trump and the other defendants – his two eldest sons and two former company executives – continued to commit fraud, a decision the former president and his lawyers called unfair.

The tension grew until Trump exploded in front of the judge: “You ruled against me, you said I was a fraud before you knew anything about me,” he snapped at Engoron, looking straight at him, in while he called prosecutor Letitia James, “corrupt politics”; He later attacked both of them through his social media.

“Scratched Record” giving arguments

Trump has repeatedly insisted that he did not commit fraud because the financial documents contain a clause that warns of their subjectivity and renders them “worthless”; He added that the allegations were not statute of limitations because so much time had passed and the banks had gotten all their money back and “didn’t complain.”

The legal notice in question “is always respected in court, except by this particular judge,” he argued, but the judge invited him to read a brief ruling in which he declared him liable for the fraud and in which he expressed the opinion with a certain humor. that Trump’s own argument on this point has no merit.

After a lunch break and in a more subdued atmosphere, Attorney Wallace presented the Trump Organization with loan documents from Deutsche Bank, one of the conditions of which was to maintain a net worth of at least $2.5 billion annually reflected in the financial documents.

“My net worth figures are significantly higher than what is included in the financial documents, so you have no basis,” he repeated, launching into a diatribe in which he referred to the impact of this process on his desire to return to business. The White house.

“This is election interference. He is an extremely hostile judge. I don’t have a jury. This is a misfortune. “This is the biggest witch hunt I’ve ever seen,” said the Republican front-runner, who faces four criminal charges and appears to still be leading in the polls against President Joe Biden, a Democrat, a year before the election. .

While Wallace read out millions of dollars in numbers and Trump denied them, at the end of the speech the judge openly yawned and said that the defendant looked like a “tired record-breaker” making the same arguments.

After leaving court, the defendant repeated positive polling results and asked for the case to be dropped, while prosecutor James said Trump was already expected to “ramble and insult” but “the facts show he falsely inflated his assets” to enrich himself and get rich. his family.”

Tomorrow, Tuesday, there will be no hearing, since today is the day of elections to the local council and the Supreme Court, but the trial is planned to resume on Wednesday, and the prosecutor’s office will call Trump’s eldest daughter Ivanka as a witness. EFE