Donald Trump Jr. returned to the witness stand in his and his father's civil fraud trial Thursday, testifying that he doesn't recall the details of several documents he was shown in court, but that the Trump Organization's accountants and accounting firm, Mazars USA, would be better acquainted with the specifics, NBC News reports. He explained that he relied on the accounting team, which included former Trump Org CFO Allen Weisselberg, and would ask relevant parties if the information in the documents were correct before authorizing them.
When asked about a 2017 loan document from Deutsche Bank on which he signed as "attorney in fact," Trump Jr. said he didn't recall signing it, adding, “I’m sure I've signed dozens of these in my time as trustee.” He also testified that he did not "have anything to do" with the organization's statements of financial condition. Donald Bender, who worked at Mazars and compiled the Trump Organization's financial statements, blamed the inflated values in the statements on information he got from the Trumps during his testimony earlier in the trial. Conservative attorney George Conway called Trump Jr.'s claims "ridiculous" because "Management representation letters are called management representation letters for a reason: They contain representations made 𝙗𝙮 𝙢𝙖𝙣𝙖𝙜𝙚𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩 and it’s the 𝙖𝙘𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙨 who are entitled to rely upon them."
"I cannot overstate how damaging these admissions are for Trump Jr., as pleasant and relatively yawn-inducing as this review of financial documents sounds," MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin tweeted. Rubin added: "Not only does the AG take issue with the veracity of those representations, but the fact that Trump Jr. signed it, after this investigation is underway, without having more than a cursory discussion with the same accountants to whom the representations were made is stunning."
