Trump Lawyers Called Another Witness Who Admitted The Company Committed Fraud

Donald Trump's lawyers in New York continue to call expert witnesses that are doing a great job of proving that the company committed fraud. This week, they called one of their accounting experts who stated clearly under oath that the value of the Trump Penthouse in Trump Tower was grossly over-estimated in filings, a key point that prosecutors have been making. But the accountant swears that it wasn't Trump's fault, much like the last expert they called, and Farron Cousins explains why that second point doesn't matter in this trial.

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

My favorite thing about Donald Trump's lawyers is, is one, just how bad they are at what they're doing. But two, it's been their turn, you know, for a couple weeks now. They're the ones who get to call their witnesses up to the stand in the fraud trial to explain away all of the horrible things that the organization and Trump and his sons did. And this past week, they had a, uh, accounting expert by the name of, uh, Eli Bartow. Now, Mr. Bartow took the stand. Trump's people wanted him to take the stand. Trump organizations paid this guy, according to Midas touch over half a million dollars over the years. He's their guy, basically. And Mr. Bartow, as a witness for the defense, gets up on the stand and says, oh yeah, they definitely overinflated the value of Trump's penthouse at Trump Tower by like a lot.

I mean, a lot. So is that, that's not what I was su I I was supposed to not say that, wasn't I. That's right folks, once again, because this is not the first time this has happened. One of Trump's own witnesses took the stand and said, oh, he, yeah, they did it. Wow. Did they do it? But Mr. Bartow insisted they didn't do it on purpose. It was just an accident. It was an oversight, right? Like Oopsy do. We really didn't mean for that to happen. But it's also totally not Trump's fault. So Bartow says quote, the price was inflated. There's no question about that. But then he goes on to say, there's no evidence of here of concealment. This is an error, but it is no fraud. My main finding is that there is no evidence whatsoever of any accounting fraud, except for the fact that they tripled the value of Donald Trump's penthouse and raised the value of Trump Tower from 80 million to $180 million.

So that's, that's an error. You know, we overvalued it in all of our statements by a hundred million dollars. But nobody's to blame, right? Who amongst us has not made a hundred million dollars accounting error from time to time, right? I mean, I know every year doing my taxes, I'm like, did I make, uh, 50,000 or did I make 1 million in 50,000? It's tough. Numbers are hard. Math is difficult, but a hundred million dollars mistake. And Trump's own witness who says, yeah, they did it, but they also didn't mean to do it. There's no evidence of concealment. Yeah, there's no evidence of concealment, because they were all on board with it, you idiot. Like, that's the point, they weren't trying to cover it up. They just cooked the books and everybody was like, cool, do it. There's nobody to hide it from when the people at the top are okay with doing it. Not to mention, 'cause he is like, you know, the accountant should have caught it. Okay, listen to me. And this

Is the same thing with the last witness who admitted, oh yeah, it was totally fraud. They're trying to pin it on low level people in the Trump organization, right? Like, oh, the accountants messed up, or the accountants did the fraud. Trump never saw it. His sons never saw it. So you're saying two things to us. First and foremost, you're telling us that Trump and his sons are so incompetent that they should not be allowed to run a business because they don't even bother checking their own financial statements. And if that is the case, then Judge Arthur Geron should feel no hesitation in dissolving Donald Trump's businesses because they're being run by idiots. The second point is that even if it were not intentional, the fact that it was submitted is in fact fraudulent. Because this is a civil trial. It's not a criminal trial. There doesn't have to be intent.

You know, your own witness may wanna look that up before he goes in there and admits that it happened, but then says, yeah, but it was an accident. Accidents happen, car accidents happen. But that doesn't mean you can't be sued in civil court and have to pay through the nose for those things because you can just like this case right here. Not to mention the fact that even if Trump didn't even see it, if those documents never crossed his desk, guess what, buddy?