As the Manhattan fraud trial of the Trump organization wraps up its second week, attorneys for Donald Trump and his family are attempting to throw the company's controller under the bus as they defend against accusations the real estate company was grossly overstating the valuations of the properties it owns.
According to a report from the Daily Beast's Jose Pagliery, retired Trump executive Jeffrey McConney is a key witness in the prosecution of the former president and his sons Donald Jr. and Eric, and although he was a trusted employee for years when it came to financial matters, now Trump's legal team is trying to undercut his testimony saying he lacks the expertise to answer questions.
As the report notes, financial maneuvering by Eric Trump is one of the key focuses of the prosecutor's queries.
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As Pagliery noted, "The inherently contradictory nature of Trump lawyers’ stance on McConney underscored the sharp contrast on display at the ongoing bank fraud trial, where James is trying to bolster a case the judge has already decided has merit while Trump lawyers combat the very premise of the investigation. When investigators point to spreadsheets, the defense either shrugs, appears confused, or claims vastly inflated values are mere differences of opinion."
Case in point, the report notes, is what Pagliery called Eric Trump's "dodgy math" that led him to instruct McConney to list a property they could not sell at quadruple its value in 2013 in financial statements.
"McConney testified that, after a telephone conversation with the Trump company executive in 2013, another section of Seven Springs jumped in value on paper from $25 million to $101 million—even though they couldn’t actually sell the property they claimed to have," the report states.
The report also goes on to note that questions are being raised about McConney's willingness on the stand to be entirely truthful since he still has yet to be paid a substantial portion of his $500,000 retirement severance package by the former president.
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