Trump's 'fanciful' defenses for fraud are not going to fly in court: ex-prosecutor

Former President Donald Trump's excuses for how he manipulated the value of his business assets are not going to hold up to scrutiny in court as New York Attorney General Letitia James pushes her civil fraud case against the former president's businesses, former federal prosecutor Harry Litman said on MSNBC Friday.

This comes after a heated exchange in court where the judge frustratedly pounded the bench over the Trump Organization's duplicity, and after Trump's legal team was forced to admit it was not "subjective" to claim the size of a triplex in Trump Tower was 30,000 square feet when it was actually just 10,000.

"Harry, it feels like this is another example that fits the pattern of truth being on the line in the legal outcome?" asked anchor Nicolle Wallace.

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"Yeah, it does," said Litman. "And the overall effort — but of course it's through the looking glass, perhaps around the edges — but it is crystal clear down the middle. And it's fanciful to say, when you sign something to a bank and say, this is how much it's worth, then it turns out to be worth one-quarter of that, that somehow there's some subjective intent defense. Of course you know, an apartment's either 10,000 or 30,000 square feet."

"This is, as you say, the really old stuff," Litman continued. this is what we heard about from Michael Cohen way back when, before Congress. It was an M.O. of the Trump Organization."

"By the way, one thing that really puts the lie to it, the valuations of some of the same properties would differ when they wanted to lowball, say for taxes," Litman added. "So as you suggest, if this point of view of, oh, it's just subjective, actually held, there could be no fraud. Fraud means a lie. And that means when they wrote that down and signed it, they knew it wasn't worth that and worth anything like it. They can try to argue that they did, but you know, there are facts here. And there are valuations here. And it doesn't help if the bank looked at it in a second way. They lied. They lied down the middle. That's fraud. Everything else is just smoke and mirrors."

Watch the video below or at the link.

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