“Accountant worked on it”
Trump Junior denies involvement in fraud
November 2, 2023, 8:20 a.m
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When Donald Trump moves into the White House, his sons take over his real estate empire. That’s why they’re involved in the process for pimped-up assets. While Junior has already chosen someone to blame, Senior takes on the judge again.
The eldest son of former US President Donald Trump has declared in the New York fraud trial that he had nothing to do with the financial documents at the center of the indictment. “I was not involved in the creation of these documents,” Donald Trump Jr. said on Wednesday (local time) in a court in New York. “The accountants worked on it, that’s what they get paid for,” he added.
When prosecutor Colleen Faherty asked who took over the family business Trump Organization after his father moved into the White House in January 2017, he replied: “A combination of me, my brother (Eric) and Allen Weisselberg,” the former finance chief, who was sentenced to prison in 2022 for tax fraud.
The 45-year-old Donald Trump Jr. – like his father and his younger brother Eric – is accused of having inflated the assets of the family real estate empire over the years in order to get better conditions for loans and insurance. Both sons are executive vice presidents of the Trump Organization, which owns numerous properties, hotels and golf courses. They should both be questioned, and Trump’s eldest daughter Ivanka could also be questioned. However, she is no longer a defendant in the proceedings.
Trump’s fraud has already been determined – the amount of the punishment is still pending
Former President Trump had previously attacked the judge responsible for the trial. “Leave my children alone, Engoron,” Trump wrote to Judge Arthur Engoron on his online platform Truth Social. He had previously fined Trump $10,000 for gossiping about court staff.
New York State Attorney General Letitia James sued Trump and his sons in September 2022. She achieved an important legal success before the trial began at the beginning of October: Judge Engoron ruled that Trump overstated the assets of his real estate and thereby committed “fraud.” The civil process is therefore particularly concerned with the question of how high the penalty will be.
Attorney General James has demanded, among other things, a fine of $250 million (236 million euros). She also wants Trump and his two eldest sons to no longer be allowed to run companies in New York. The ex-president is not threatened with a prison sentence in this case.
In addition to the civil case, the ex-president has been charged in four criminal cases. Two charges concern the right-wing populist’s attempts to overturn the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and thus stay in power.