The final day of Donald Trump’s three-month bank fraud trial began Thursday with spirited remarks from his defense lawyer and continued with an unexpected—and explosive—speech from the former president himself.
The closing arguments proceeded without interruption, despite an early morning bomb threat to the judge’s home—a sad culmination of the MAGA death threats and menacing calls to the courthouse that plagued the trial from the start and only increased with Trump’s fuming rhetoric.
As for the trial itself, which threatens to obliterate the billionaire’s famed real estate empire and was mostly decided before courtroom arguments even began, it was more standard fare Thursday.
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That is until the judge made the surprise last-minute decision to allow Trump to speak—if the fiery politician would follow the rules of court decorum—only to have the billionaire launch into an attack against the justice system.
“The financial statements were perfect, there were no witnesses against us, the banks got paid back… the banks are as happy as can be… there’s no fraud. What’s happened here sir, is a fraud on me,” Trump told the judge while sitting down. “This is a political witch hunt… we should receive damages for what we’ve gone through.”
The judge began to lose his patience when Trump ignored the rules, which dictate that he sum up the case by sticking to speaking about the evidence presented in court.
“We have a situation where I’m an innocent man. I’ve been persecuted by someone running for office… I’ve built buildings all over the city. I’ve never had a problem. Until now… they want to make sure I don’t win again. This is election interference,” he said, decrying the case as an attempt to ruin his chances at winning back the White House in 2024.
When the judge held up his finger to indicate that they had one minute left before the scheduled and mandatory 1 p.m. break, Trump lost his cool.
“You can’t listen for more than one minute. This is a persecution—”
“Mr. Kise please control your client,” the judge said, looking away from the former president and directing his comments to the man’s lawyer.
The morning session got started with Christopher Kise, a former Florida solicitor general who was Trump’s lead defense lawyer at trial. He spent much of the morning laying out his version of the case—trivializing the billionaire’s tendency to slap outsized values on his properties, rejecting the New York Attorney General’s claim that Trump tried to trick banks, and asserting that state investigators failed to prove their case.
But a coy interjection from Justice Arthur F. Engoron managed to cut through the sound and fury, as the judge made a passing reference to the clearest evidence in the case: the way Trump tripled the size of his three-floor Trump Tower apartment by faking it on paper.
“Let me just ask you a question: How many square feet is the triplex?” Engoron asked.
“11,000 square feet,” Kise sheepishly admitted, pointing to available real estate records, but dodging any reference to the blatant lie by his client that ballooned it to more than three times that.
Still, Kise spent nearly two hours talking up his client’s riches, painting the picture of a man who was too wealthy to ever succumb to such lowly criminal behavior—a mirrored reflection of the oft-repeated mantra that bolstered Trump’s political rise as a businessman who was so successful he didn’t need to seek the presidency.
“There’s no benefit obtained through fraud,” Kise said, noting that Trump’s billionaire status already gave him the highest kind of preferential treatment from financial institutions. “They rolled out the red carpet and they’re dragging President Trump through the door… he’s one of 10 or 25 people in the world that the bank wants to welcome through his door.”
The Trump defense team’s last stand was an attempt to cast doubt on every aspect of the case.
“Just because our number is X and the Attorney General’s is Y and the bank’s is Z… none of that is indicia of fraud,” Kise said, chalking up any valuation disagreements to subjective interpretation.
“President Trump relied on multi-million dollar accountants at Mazars,” Kise said, pushing the blame toward the bean counters.
Attempting to reason through the vast overstatements of wealth that litter Trump’s decades-long history of bluster, Kise simply minimized the entire affair.
“He never intended for Deutsche Bank to rely solely on his statements of financial condition… he knows they perform their own analysis… President Trump’s testimony is bolstered by the bank. The bank says the exact same thing. They don’t just rely on any piece of paper handed over by a borrower,” Kise said.
While Trump’s lawyer rapidly delivered his impassioned pleas that the judge simply chuck out the whole case, Trump was stoic and silent on the left-side defense table, wearing a scowl to match the American flag lapel pin on his standard blue suit. As he did throughout the trial, from October until January, Trump saved his fury for social media.
Not one to even feign the appearance of civility, Trump announced to his followers on Thursday morning that he was leaving his palatial abode at Trump Tower and taking a short caravan to the courthouse.
“Heading down to the Unconstitutional Witch Hunt in Lower Manhattan. ELECTION INTERFERENCE!!!” he posted on his Truth Social network.
Trump has remained indignant throughout the civil trial, which got a rough start when the judge handed AG Letitia James a definitive victory days before her lawsuit against the Trump family and Trump Organization executives officially went to trial. Lawyers on both sides had asked the judge for summary judgment—to essentially decide the case before trial—and Engoron relied on thousands of documents in evidence put before him over the course of three years to determine that Trump had undoubtedly lied to overvalue his properties and thus committed bank fraud. But Engoron reserved judgment on a half dozen additional counts about whether the Trumps faked business records and committed insurance fraud, too.
The fight proceeded as a bench trial, with the judge making the final decision all on his own—given that Trump’s lawyers notably never formally asked for a jury to be empaneled to decide the case.
In court on Thursday, Kise also addressed what was widely perceived as the weakest link in the AG’s case: the much-anticipated court testimony of Michael Cohen, the man who was once Trump’s trusted lawyer until he took the fall for the billionaire, became a convicted felon, and lost his law license.
Kise called him a “serial liar” and claimed that “Michael Cohen is the Attorney General’s only witness on intent.”
“He admitted he lied to Congress… he admitted he lied at his plea hearing. He admitted he lied to Judge Pauley at his sentencing,” Kise said, noting how fellow defense lawyer Alina Habba managed to get Cohen on the witness stand to admit to new instances of lying.
Kise even cracked something of a joke, telling Engoron that the AG is putting him in the "absurdly uncomfortable position that you, judge, have to find Michael Cohen credible… who’s now accused of lying and using artificial intelligence in legal filings."
Kise ended his marathon speech by deriding the AG’s case as nothing more than the product of an overzealous prosecutor adopting a creative use of a consumer protection law to insert herself in the private business dealings of a successful real estate magnate.
“There’s no real world impact here,” Kise said. “The AG is weaponizing a consumer protection statute. It’s not a license for the attorney general to strip a business of all their property without a jury.”
Engoron, who seemed entirely unmoved, responded cooly.
“Thank you, Mr. Kise. That was quite a feat of endurance,” the judge said.
Next up was Alina Habba, the New Jersey lawyer who has become Trump’s favored legal spokeswoman at conservative TV shows and political rallies. Habba peppered her remarks with what have become her trademark sarcasm and dramatic flare.
"President Trump is worth billions," she said, dramatically leaning forward toward the judge as she stressed the final word.
Habba, pacing across the courtroom with a bounce in her step, waved her hands around as she laughed out loud while ridiculing the case.
“Some fraud! What a fraudster!” she said. “They will tell you 30,000 square feet is fraud. It’s fraud, I tell you! It’s fraud! Your Honor, have you ever made a mistake?”
“No,” Engoron shot back, jokingly.
“Me either,” she retorted.
Habba was followed by defense attorney Clifford Robert, who pleaded that the judge not punish Don Jr. and Eric, the two Trump heirs who have been running the family company for more than a decade.
“They’re seeking the death penalty against them, professionally… they have their futures ahead of them. We take for granted that billion dollar companies run themselves. They don’t,” Robert said. “There are thousands of employees that rely on Eric and Don keeping their hands on the wheel.”
After Trump’s short speech in court before the judge and a lunch break, two lawyers with the AG’s office took turns recapping the case that resulted from their three-year investigation.
“They can’t argue that Trump’s triplex was in fact 30,000 square feet… or that unsold units at Park Avenue weren’t rent stabilized… the statements of financial condition were false on every issue from 2011,” AG senior enforcement counsel Kevin Wallace said. “There’s no suggestion that any of this was a mistake.”
AG special litigation counsel Andrew Amer combed through the evidence and testimony presented at trial and stressed that Don Jr.’s and Eric’s “lack of recollection” was a “convenient way” to get away with participating in fraud. And he laid the blame on the family’s doorstep—particularly on the patriarch himself.
“The buck stops with him,” Amer said. “Mr. Trump cannot disavow any knowledge about how the statements were going to be used, because he personally signed certifications to the banks… he clearly knew the statements were being used to satisfy continuing obligations under his loan guarantees, and he had the motive to keep his net worth as high as possible.”
The fate of the case is now entirely with Justice Engoron, who is expected to issue a ruling in the coming weeks—potentially dooming the company and imposing more than $250 million in fines just as Trump faces Republican primary voters across the country.
