After 10 weeks, 40 witnesses and bursts of courtroom fireworks, testimony wrapped up Wednesday in former President Donald Trump's civil business fraud trial. But a verdict is at least a month away.
Closing arguments are set for January 11, and Judge Arthur Engoron has said he hopes to decide the case by the end of that month. The verdict is up to him because New York Attorney General Letitia James brought the case under a state law that doesn't allow for a jury.
"In a strange way, I'm gonna miss this trial,” Engoron mused aloud on Wednesday before the last hours of testimony, which were about accounting standards. James' lawsuit accuses the Republican presidential 2024 front-runner, his company and key executives — including sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump — of deceiving banks and insurers by giving them financial statements that padded the ex-president's wealth by billions of dollars.
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The suit claims the documents larded the value of such prominent and and personally significant holdings as his Trump Tower penthouse in New York and his Mar-a-Lago club and home in Florida, as well as golf courses, hotels, a Wall Street office building and more. The defendants deny any wrongdoing, and Trump has made that vehemently clear on the witness stand, in the courthouse hallway, and and in frequent comments on his Truth Social platform.
“A total hit job,” he railed Wednesday in an all-caps post that reiterated his criticisms of the judge and complaints that there was “no jury, no victim." Trump took a significant legal hit even before the trial, when Engoron ruled that he engaged in fraud. The judge ordered that a receiver take control of some of the ex-president's properties, but an appeals court has frozen that order for now.
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The trial concerns remaining claims of conspiracy, insurance fraud and falsifying business records. James is seeking penalties of more than USD 300 million and wants Trump to be banned from doing business in New York.
