Perjury traps loomed over Trump testimony — and a Forbes reporter has the receipts

Former President Donald Trump's last-minute decision to back out of testifying at his civil fraud trial in New York sparked speculation about what could have prompted him to change his mind.

Forbes reporter Dan Alexander reacted to this news by posting a lengthy thread on Twitter in which he outlined the multiple perjury traps Trump faced if he had decided to go through with his testimony, and he cited his own publication's work to show questions prosecutors could have used to trip up the former president.

First, Alexander examined Trump's previous testimony on the valuation of his Trump Tower penthouse that had been listed in financial documents as having three times its actual square footage.

"Trump blamed others for getting it wrong," Alexander wrote in summing up Trump's testimony. "Then, after Trump testified, we at Forbes released an audio clip--which had not previously been made public--showing him personally lying about the square footage of his penthouse, claiming it was 33,000 square feet."

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Subsequent reporting by Forbes also contradicted Trump's claims that he personally discovered the misreported penthouse valuation and personally instructed his accountants to fix it, when in reality those accountants only fixed it after Forbes published an expose showing that the penthouse was wildly overvalued.

What's more, explained Alexander, the penthouse was far from the only instance where Trump's testimony veered wildly from reality.

"Take 40 Wall Street," Alexander continued. "In his earlier testimony, the state asked Trump: 'Have you ever inflated the operating income of 40 Wall Street?' Trump, when asked if he had ever inflated the operating income at 40 Wall Street, replied: 'Not that I know of.' But he has, by egregious amounts. We have that on tape, too."

Read the whole thread here.