Former President Donald Trump has issued a statement in public announcing his intention to offer testimony in the ongoing civil fraud lawsuit, valued at $250 million, which has been initiated against him by Letitia James, the Attorney General of New York.
Former President Donald Trump, according to a report by Newsmax, has indicated his intention to offer testimony “at the appropriate time.” Both the witness schedules for his own defense and the team advocating for the Attorney General include him.
“Yes, I will” testify at the trial, Trump told reporters in remarks during the lunch break on day two of the trial Tuesday. “At the appropriate time, I will be,” he added.
“I think it’s going very well,” he continued after being asked to assess the trial thus far.
“There was absolutely no fraud,” Trump said, going on to criticize James as having filed a corrupt and politically motivated case. “They all made money. They’re all happy, 100% happy.”
Trump reaffirmed his earlier claim that a disclaimer reading “buyer beware” was consistently appended by his accountants to the final pages of his financial statements.
“It says, ‘Please, you must understand that you have to do your own due diligence and you have to, above all, do your own research and analysis: Do not rely on anything; do not rely on the financial statements,’” Trump added. “Also, the financial statements are very strong in terms of cash liquidity and everything else.
“This case is a scam. There can’t be fraud when you’ve told institutions to do their own work. This case is a fraud and scam,” he added.
On the other hand, the case has been presided over by Judge Arthur Engoron, who has demonstrated an exceptionally adversarial attitude towards the former president and his legal representative.
On Friday, Engoron issued a cautionary statement in which he suggested that Trump could face imprisonment and significant financial penalties as a consequence of his flagrant disregard for a prohibition order. This infraction concerned Trump’s denial of retraction of a website post in which he directed criticism towards court personnel.
“In the current overheated climate, incendiary comments can, and in some cases already have, led to serious physical harm and worse. I will now allow the defendants to explain why this blatant violation of the gag order would not result in serious sanctions, including financial sanctions and/or possibly imprisoning him,” Engoron said.
The present legal proceeding, which is being presided over by Judge Engoron, concerns accusations of fraudulent activity and is categorized as a civil case. As a result, incarceration of Trump appears improbable; instead, he might be subjected to monetary sanctions and the possible liquidation of his real estate investments.
A Daily Beast report states that the judge issued a warning to Trump, wherein he threatened to incarcerate him should he fail to comply with the stipulations.
Defense attorney Christopher Kise expeditiously issued an apology, attributing the incident to an unintentional oversight by the extensive “campaign machinery” of Trump, which failed to remove a webpage that replicated the Truth Social post that Trump had previously deleted.
“There was no intention to evade or circumvent or ignore the order. I assure you that. I just know that this is a very large machine and this is one of the reasons, frankly, I don’t have social media,” Kise said, trying to deflect with some light humor.
“But that’s been taken down. And we don’t have any other… there were no subsequent postings,” Kise added.
“I will take that under advisement, but… Donald Trump is still responsible for the large machine,” Engoron reminded him.
As a result of the judge’s previous admonitions directed at the emotionally unstable real estate agent, this official reprimand has been issued. The judge issued a warning against the recurrence of strategies intended to intimidate witnesses and defame judges and prosecutors within the New York state court jurisdiction.
To provide legal counsel for President Trump with an accurate assessment of the seriousness of their predicament, Engoron devoted a segment of his Friday morning schedule to undertaking a thorough investigation of the occurrences that have thus far taken place. This entailed attending to the matter concerning a slanderous and inaccurate tweet that was directed at my esteemed primary law scribe on a personal level.
Moreover, sources claim that he disclosed to the media the proceedings that took place in his tribunal while they were absent.