Trump's Own Witness Destroys His Defense In Fraud Trial

Donald Trump and his company suffered a major blow in the New York fraud trial this week when their own witness shattered their defense. The witness, Doug Larson, was allegedly the man who appraised Trump's properties well above their actual value, but under questioning by the state attorney, Larson says he never did any appraisals - even though his name is listed on at least five years' worth of documents from the Trump Organization. Farron Cousins explains what this means.

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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

Donald Trump and his sons, and of course his company, the Trump organization, suffered a pretty massive setback in their New York fraud trial this week when one of their star witnesses, a guy they called, totally destroyed their entire defense. The man is a man named Doug Larsson, who is a professional property appraiser with the, uh, New York firm real estate firm, Newmark, and Mr. Larson's name is listed in at least five years worth of Trump organization documents as the individual who appraised properties at multiple locations in New York. And they went with his numbers, put 'em in their documents, used them to get loans. So they said, Hey, Mr. Larsson, you gave us these numbers, so come and testify about what you did to appraise these properties. And Mr. Larsson said, I'd be more than happy to. So Larsson gets up on the stand and the state attorney starts asking him questions. And that is when Mr. Larsson revealed, I never appraised any of these properties.

I I didn't do that. Which may explain why Mr. Larsson was of course so eager to testify to make sure people knew he didn't actually do the things that the Trump organization claims that he did. Let me read you this exchange that took place in court. Lawyer asks him, is it fair to say that Mr. Trump valued Trump Tower at 526 million in conjunction with you? No, that is incorrect. Larsson said, were you aware that Mr. McConney was citing you as a valuation source in his work paper? No, I was not. Larsson said, so, according to Larsson, I didn't appraise these properties. I didn't know they were putting my name on these things. And to, to be honest, that, that kind of makes you wonder, why did the Trump lawyers even bother calling this guy if they, they knew he didn't do it? Like you are putting a witness on the stand that is going to 100% prove that you defrauded the banks. Like that's your witness. Okay? Letitia James didn't call this guy. You did. So, several possibilities here. Let's run through them real quick. The first is that Mr. Larsson is lying. Okay? If he's lying under oath and he's the one who gets in trouble, we gotta take everything as a possibility, right? There is a chance that he did do the valuations. He's just lying. 'cause he doesn't want to get in trouble 'cause he could get in trouble if he appraised them higher than what they actually were. So that's possibility number one. Possibility number two. Two

Is that the Trump organization forged his name on these documents. If that is the case, then the Trump organization should be looking at some kind of serious criminal charges for that possibility. Now, another possibility, this one also by the way, bad, uh, for Mr. Larsson is that he was supposed to do the appraisals like he was contracted to do them and just didn't do it and just kind of wrote stuff down and was like, uh, here. So three possibilities there. Two of them bad for Larsson, one of them very bad for the Trump organization. Again, if you're forging somebody else's name and assigning something to someone else and using that as a legal reference, then yeah, you've got serious legal consequences coming your way. Either way, Mr. Larsson maintains he didn't do it. You know, he, he didn't appraise any of these properties. I think there's three or four of 'em, um, even though his name's on these documents for five years.

And he says he didn't know. So again, I gotta go back to why the hell has Alvin Bragg not brought criminal charges against the Trump organization? Why did Leticia James, the Attorney General, who I think has done a great job, by the way, but why did she bring this as a civil case instead of a criminal case? 'cause we're finding out more and more stuff here during this trial that makes this look far more criminal than previously thought. Now it is possible brag could bring criminal charges after all is said and done.