'Really hard to convince the judge there was no bad intent': ex-FBI counsel on Trump's fraud trial
Donald Trump appeared in court in New York on Monday, glaring at the judge and prosecutors as the final leg of a fraud trial involving the Trump Organization began. While the judge has already decided on one charge, there are still six others that Trump must fight.
But one long-time legal analyst thinks Trump will struggle to persuade the judge.
"What we're really seeing now is the trial of the next six counts and a damages trial," former FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann began, speaking to MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace. "Why Trump is there, I assume it's because like he really wants to get his story out and I think he also realized that, if he wasn't called by the defense, that [Attorney General] Tish James is going to call him.
"Remember this is the case where he initially took the Fifth [Amendment] and then, because it's a civil case, he decided to testify because if you take the Fifth in a civil case, it's basically you're done because there's an adverse inference."
But Weissmann said he thinks testifying is unlikely to sway the judge.
"One, because the judge has already made findings against him, it's going to be very hard to get him to change his mind, and there's good reason for that," he continued. "Just one example, which is the Trump Tower apartment, but it's such a great example because it's so concrete. You know how big your home is and it's not 30,000 square feet, it's 10,000 square feet, and, you know, it's hard to say anything other than he lied about it.
"In fact, his defense counsel in court did not have an argument for why that wasn't an intentional misstatement on his part. So, I think he doesn't really have a lot of choice, if he wants to prevail here, than to testify."
The judge has already ruled that Trump overvalued his properties. Among the things he is looking at now is intent.
"And as I said, I think that's going to be very hard to convince the judge, that he didn't have a bad intent," said Weissmann.
"But the second is really kind of a factoid, it shouldn't really help Donald Trump. The defense is, even if I intentionally lied, the banks didn't rely on it. In other words, they didn't care because they were looking at other things. And that is actually their main argument and the only one they can sort of hope to prevail on, but it's super unattractive, right?"
He explained that the idea of defending yourself by saying you're an "intentional fraudster" isn't exactly the best thing for Trump.
"I think the reason you are not seeing it being touted in their openings is because it's such an unattractive argument for someone to make who is, again, the leader of the free world, you know, just a few years ago," he closed. "But I think that's their only hope with respect to the six counts which are being tried right now, is that lack of reliance by the banks."
See the discussion in the video below or at the link here.
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