Judge blocks Trump plan to deliver own closing argument in New York fraud trial
Donald Trump’s plans to deliver closing arguments on Thursday in his New York civil business fraud trial were dashed on Wednesday by the judge overseeing the case.
Trump had planned to give his own speech in addition to his legal team’s summations, according to two people familiar with the highly unusual plan. But judge Arthur Engoron rescinded permission for the speech.
In an email exchange, the judge requested Trump agree to certain conditions – requiring he focused only on the facts of the case, and refrained from introducing new evidence, or commenting on “irrelevant matters” – to formally address the court.
Engoron also stressed that Trump would not be allowed to deliver “a campaign speech”, or “impugn myself, my staff, plaintiff, plaintiff ’s staff, or the New York state court system”.
The former president’s legal team would not agree to these terms.
“I won’t debate this yet again,” Engoron wrote on Wednesday, after Trump’s lawyers pushed back. “Take it or leave it. Now or never. You have until noon, seven minutes from now. I WILL NOT GRANT ANY FURTHER EXTENSIONS.”
When Trump’s lawyers failed to respond in time, Engoron followed up with another email.
“Not having heard from you by the third extended deadline,” he wrote, “I assume that Mr Trump will not agree to the reasonable, lawful limits I have imposed as a precondition to giving a closing statement above and beyond those given by his attorneys, and that, therefore, he will not be speaking in court tomorrow.”
The exchange, disclosed in court filings, also revealed that Trump had requested on Tuesday evening that this week’s court date be postponed until later this month following the death of his mother-in-law. His lawyers cited “the challenges presented by this deeply personal family matter”.
Engoron denied the request, however. “I am sorry to hear the sad news,” he wrote, before explaining that “every appearance of Mr Trump requires court officers, court clerks, administrators, security details, technical people, etc to rearrange their schedules and to plan for the day”.
Trump is a defendant in the case brought by the New York attorney general, Letitia James. She claims his net worth was inflated by billions of dollars on financial statements that helped him secure business loans and insurance.
An attorney for Trump informed Engoron earlier this week that the former president wished to speak during the closing arguments, and the judge approved the plan, according to one of the two people who spoke to the Associated Press.
Both persons who confirmed the plan did so on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the information to reporters.
The Trump campaign and a spokesperson for James declined to comment.
The former president and current Republican frontrunner denies any wrongdoing, and he has condemned the case during a peppery day of testimony, on social media and in verbal comments in the courthouse hallway.
In recent days on his Truth Social platform, he called the case a “hoax”, dismissed the months-long proceedings as as a “pathetic excuse for a trial”, and criticized the judge and the attorney general, both Democrats.
But delivering a summation would have been another matter.
Although some people represent themselves, it is highly uncommon for defendants personally to give summations if they have attorneys to do so. Trump has several, and he is not a lawyer.
In closing arguments, both sides give their views of what the evidence has shown and why they should win. It is each camp’s last chance to try to persuade the ultimate decision-maker – in this case, Judge Engoron.
Trump’s plans regarding the trial have changed before. In December, he was scheduled to testify as a witness for a second time, but he canceled the day before, saying he had “nothing more to say”.
James’s office says Trump, his business and some top executives defrauded banks and insurers by hugely goosing the values of assets such as his triplex at Trump Tower in New York and his Mar-a-Lago club and residence in Florida.
The state claims the bigger numbers got Trump better rates, while lenders and insurers didn’t get the information they needed to make a truly informed assessment of the risk they were taking on and what they should charge for it.
The “defendants reaped hundreds of millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains through their unlawful conduct”, state lawyers wrote in a court filing on Friday. They are seeking $370m in penalties, plus interest, and a ban on Trump doing business in New York.
The defense says Trump more than qualified for the deals he got – and say he upheld his end of them, including by repaying all the loans. He and his lawyers maintain that his financial statements were clearly offered as unaudited estimates that recipients should check out for themselves, and that the net worth numbers were far too low, not the opposite. Any overstatements were just errors too small to affect the bottom line, the defense says.
“There have been no losses to any party, as the loans here were negotiated between very sophisticated parties,” Trump lawyers Christopher Kise and Michael T Madaio wrote Friday in court papers. “Lenders made their own informed decisions.”
Engoron will weigh claims of conspiracy, insurance fraud and falsifying business records. He has said he hopes to have a verdict by the end of this month.
He decided the lawsuit’s top claim before trial, ruling that Trump and other defendants engaged in fraud for years. The judge then ordered that a receiver take control of some of the expresident’s properties, but an appeals court has frozen that order for now.