Consider This from NPR - Eric and Donald Trump Jr. Take the Stand

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

The two older sons of former President Donald Trump spent Thursday in a New York courtroom testifying in the civil fraud case against them and their father.The trial accuses the two brothers, as well as their father, of knowingly committing fraud by submitting statements of financial condition that inflated the value of their properties and other assets. During testimony, Eric and Donald Jr. repeatedly distanced themselves from The Trump Organization's fraudulent financial statements and declarations to banks. NPR's Andrea Bernstein and Ximena Bustillo report on the trial and what's at stake for The Trump Organization.Email us at [e-mail] Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

OK, we're now a month into the civil trial in New York that's put a spotlight on former President Trump's family business. And this week, witnesses with a lot on the line have been testifying. Donald Trump Jr. taking the witness stand in lower Manhattan. All right, he's the first member of the Trump family to testify in the civil fraud trial, accusing the former president and other executives at his company of conspiring to exaggerate his wealth. This is a moment of high stakes for the Trump family. With this civil lawsuit in New York, they're facing a potential $250 million fine

and the end of their ability to do business in New York. Now, Donald Jr. has repeatedly attacked this case on social media, calling the trial a, quote, sham and kangaroo court. NPR's Andrea Bernstein has been following the case and laid out what New York's Attorney General Letitia James is trying to prove, relying in part on Trump's former attorney, Michael Cohen, who has also testified in this case. We're now in the fifth week of the trial.

And up to now, we've heard mostly about the ways Donald Trump wanted to pump up values to get better loans and insurance rates. As Michael Cohen testified, Trump would say something like, I'm not really worth $4.5 billion, I'm worth $6 billion. And then Cohen and others understood it was their job to, quote, reverse engineer property values to get the numbers up to worth $6 billion. And then Cohen and others understood it was their job to, quote, reverse engineer property values to get the numbers up to that $6 billion. But there are a lot of years after Trump became president when he wasn't so involved. And Bernstein said that is where Don Jr. and his brother Eric come in.

In early 2017, Donald Trump turned the daily management of the company over to them. We saw a document that showed Don Jr. and Eric with power of attorney over all matters, including real estate and banking. We saw Don Jr. has been trustee of the trust that held Donald Trump's company. So the AG wants to prove the conspiracy to inflate values kept going during the period when Donald Trump's sons ran the operation, from 2017 until the present. On the stand, Don Jr. sought to distance himself from the fraudulent valuation, saying repeatedly, quote, I trusted the accountants, I trusted the lawyers. And after testifying, he echoed a popular

sentiment of his father's. Unfortunately, the attorney general has brought forth a case that is purely a political persecution. But since the start of this trial, Letitia James has remained firm. Donald Trump and the other defendants have committed persistent and repeated fraud. Consider this. In addition to this trial for fraud, Donald Trump is also a defendant in four pending criminal cases, including a federal election interference trial set to begin in March. And even with all of that going on, he is still the frontrunner to win the Republican presidential nomination. From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang. It's Thursday, November 2nd. It's Consider This from NPR. The two older sons of former President Trump spent Thursday in a New York courtroom talking about how they ran the Trump organization after their father became president, but also distancing themselves from fraudulent financial statements and declarations to banks.

My colleague Juana Summers spoke with NPR's Andrea Bernstein, who was in the courtroom as the Trump brothers testified. Andrea, you had a real look inside the Trump organization today. What'd you learn? That's right. So we've watched extensive testimony from the organization's former chief financial officer, its accountants, and its appraisers. But what we saw today was the two men who were running the company from the time their father became president in 2017. And on the one hand, both Don Jr. and Eric Trump said yes, they were responsible for the worldwide operations of the company, but when asked for specifics, they insisted they were barely familiar with essential documents, such as the statements of financial condition that are at the heart of this case. Say more about that. Give us an example. For example, Donald Trump Jr. had power of attorney for his father and was the trustee, along with former CFO Allen Weisselberg, in charge of the entity that held the company's assets when Trump

was president, the Donald J. Trump Rebicable Trust. And as such, he had to sign a letter to the firm's outside accountants, Mazars USA, that they were giving them raw data that was free of material misrepresentations or more plainly lies. But Don Jr. said he actually got all the information from the accountants, prompting the assistant AG to ask, you relied on Mazars to make representations to Mazars? He answered, that's why we have accountants. The AG then went through a series of documents, and basically Don Jr.'s answer about all of them was the same.

He didn't prepare them. He hadn't read them. He signed them on the advice of his lawyers or his accountants. Okay, that's Don Jr. What about Eric Trump? So in a move that might have come straight from Logan Roy, the patriarch in the TV series Succession, Donald Trump made Don Jr. the trustee of his trust, but it was Eric Trump who's actually been running the Trump organization day to day. He established early on that while Trump was president,

there was no one above him in the company. But Eric disclaimed any knowledge of the existence of statements of financial conditions, which we now know to be false, from the outset of his testimony, saying, quote, I never had anything to do with them. He added, I was responsible for building properties and pouring concrete. This was not in my domain. But the assistant AG kept asking him about how he could run such a large company without being involved in these statements. And at one point,

Eric Trump erupted saying, quote, we were a major organization, a massive real estate organization. And he added, of course, I was clear he had financial statements. Absolutely. And Andrea, I mean, if Eric Trump was running the day-to-day operations of the company, was there evidence that he was aware of false values? Well, all afternoon, the AG's office presented evidence that Eric Trump was involved in working with an appraiser to value a property north of New York called Seven Springs. The development didn't work out, so the Trumps decided to donate the property to New York State for a tax benefit.

And the property was valued at a very high number, meaning the Trumps got a $21 million tax deduction, nearly 10 times what they had initially paid for the property. At one point, Eric Trump referred to a calendar entry he'd set up on the appraisal as, quote, very consistent with my OCD personality. But then the AG played Eric Trump's videotaped deposition where he said, quote, I have not been involved in the appraisal work on that property. And when confronted with this apparent contradiction, Eric Trump said something else. I was involved, but to a very small point. That was NPR's Andrea Bernstein speaking with Juana Summers. NPR's Ximena Bustillo has also been following the case.

She spoke with Here and Now's Scott Tong about key moments in the case so far. So Alan Weisselberg testifying, he is a former Trump executive who has already done jail time this year for tax evasion, though on a different case. And he is, as I mentioned earlier, one of the defendants. He spent a lot of time saying that he couldn't remember if he discussed financial statements with the former President Donald Trump as they were being finalized. Another big moment in this case has been the testimony of Michael Cohen, which happened last year. He is a former Trump attorney and was known as being Trump's fixer. And he testified that he had to, quote, reverse engineer financial statements and, you know, kind of describe Trump as a mob boss in

terms of he was never directly asked to do this. But, you know, he said, you know what Trump wants without him explicitly telling you. Big moments have kind of popped up throughout because Trump himself has come to the trial, even though he isn't necessarily required to. But he has spent a couple of days here on the first week, a couple of weeks later, and then to face off against Michael Cohen during his testimony last week. And so during that time, he comes out and he talks to press and and those are big moments as well. Yeah. Yeah. This is also playing out, of course, in social media. Should we presume, you know, this is emboldening Trump supporters on one side and his opponents on the other in the public? Yes. This is something that we have seen mostly because of the profile

of the 2024 election. We see Donald Trump as the current GOP frontrunner. But it is important to note that although this is one of many pending trials, it's likely to be the first one to get a verdict. But it also has nothing to do with any election. There are other trials that have to do with either the 2016 or the 2020 election. So this doesn't stop him from running or from continuing to use this as a fundraising effort as him and many of his supporters have. That was NPR's Ximena Bustillo speaking with Here and Now's Scott Tom. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang.