Yet again, putting Trump under oath was no match for his propensity for hyperbole and falsehoods.
He continued to claim that his Mar-a-Lago property was worth between $1 billion and $1.5 billion. Experts find that claim highly dubious, and the county values it in the tens of millions. James’s office has also produced evidence calling into question Trump’s claim that the property is worth so much because it can be treated as “a large, unrestricted residential plot of land that could be valued on a per-acre basis and sold off in that fashion.”
(Trump also accused Engoron of valuing the property at just $18 million; in fact, Engoron merely cited an appraisal mentioning that amount.)
Trump repeatedly claimed that his properties were actually undervalued, saying, “The overall value is billions of dollars more than is in these statements, so whenever the bank gets them the bank is seeing a conservative statement.” Even the high estimates of Trump’s net worth are in the single-digit billions, meaning Trump was trying to inflate his wealth significantly — at a trial that was about his fraudulent inflation of his wealth.
Trump tried to claim that there was effectively no victim here: “There was no loss of money. [The banks] made a lot of money, and everyone is trying to figure out why you’re doing it.” But a prosecution witness last week testified that Trump would have paid much higher interests rates if he hadn’t exaggerated his wealth, saving Trump and costing the banks about $168 million — money James has labeled ill-gotten gains.
He also distanced himself from his New York City penthouse having previously been valued as if it had 30,000 square feet, when in fact it was later acknowledged to have only 10,996. “They took 10,000 feet per floor, and they went times three,” he said, according to legal correspondent Adam Klasfeld. “But they didn’t take out elevator shafts and different things.” He added: “I thought the apartment was overvalued, but I never really looked at it.”
In fact, Trump himself had been using such numbers publicly, and they were changed after a 2017 Forbes exposé.
This was actually the second time Trump has taken the stand in this trial. In his first, brief appearance, he claimed comments he made didn’t violate a gag order because they weren’t about Engoron’s clerk.
Engoron found that Trump’s explanation was “not credible.”
