Trump threw money away on fraud trial witnesses — and got played: biographer

David Cay Johnston, one of Donald Trump's biographers, wrote for The New Republic on Monday that the hefty fine in the New York fraud case is of the former president's own making.

According to Johnston, Trump made bad — and expensive — deals as he built his defense. And they came back to bite him.

The biographer cited Judge Arthur Engoron's ruling, which included a statement that every witness Trump's legal team put on the stand "lacked credibility, and many outright lied."

While Trump's allies in the legal world, including lawyer Jonathan Turley, claim he was a victim of "selective prosecution," Johnston explains that Engoron "meticulously" walked through the dozens of lies told not only by Trump, but by his adult children and by the witnesses that they called.

Among the two expert witnesses the Trump Organization hired — for hundreds of thousands of dollars — Engoron alleged that they, too, lacked sufficient credibility to testify.

Johnston also illustrated Trump's poor deal-making by describing the contract he made with the ghostwriter of the ex-president's book, "The Art of the Deal."

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"Trump brags about what a great dealmaker he is," Johnston wrote. "But at a time when a first-rate ghostwriter cost perhaps $50,000 and a bonus for every week a book made the New York Times bestseller list, Trump instantly accepted ghostwriter Tony Schwartz’s request for half the royalties — money that made Schwartz a wealthy man before he started donating his half to charity."

"Trump boasts that he hires 'all the best people,'" recalled Johnston. "But consider the testimony of Steven Laposa, paid about $276,000 as an expert in 'real estate research.' The judge found that Laposa 'had no experience preparing or revealing personal financial statements' and 'no knowledge of the types of valuations or methods that Trump used to value his assets' and knew virtually nothing about real estate appraisal."

Basically, Trump has been throwing money away and getting played, he said.

Meanwhile, co-defendants Jeff McConney and Allen Weisselberg have been barred from working as accountants for life in New York.

Engoron explained that McConney had two instances of conflicting testimony. In one moment, he claimed Trump "had no right to withdraw funds" from a partnership he had with the huge real estate firm Vornado.

"Yet McConney showed these funds in Trump’s Statements of Financial Condition as readily available cash," explained Johnston of Engoron's 92-page ruling.

Johnston closed by saying that the final opinion of Engoron "should carry over into whether to entrust Donald Trump once again with the presidency’s powers. People who want a man in the White House who thumbs his nose at the law, has no remorse for cheating others, and lies as easily as he breathes should vote for him."

Read the full piece here.