Since, at the very least, his first involvement in the “birther” movement in 2011, there are two qualities that have followed Donald Trump around as inescapably as tyre tracks behind a car: genuine menace and pitiful farce.
So it is with the 45th president of the United States’ New York civil fraud trial — one of a dizzying number of court cases Trump is going to have to attend over the next few years.
Trump has never stopped talking darkly of conspiracies against him — already describing Judge Arthur Engoron as “a Democrat operative” and a “Trump-hating judge who is unfair, unhinged and vicious”. He remains the Republican most likely to gain the nomination for 2024, and indeed his legal woes have formed a de facto campaign trail: he was not subjected to a mugshot in his first indictment, partly so he could not use the imagery for fundraising, so his team went ahead and mocked one up anyway. When he finally did get the treatment, in Fulton County Jail in Atlanta Georgia, his team used it to raise more than US$7 million in less than a week.
The cultish air around his support was reinforced when a court employee approached Trump and his lawyers shouting offers of help and had to be led “screaming” from the building by law enforcement. The employee has since been placed on “administrative leave”.
This same figure, this dark and unstoppable river from which so many of the bleaker tributaries of conservative politics in the US and elsewhere flow, is also someone who has to be shushed by the judge for whining too loudly during his trial, one that has already found that much of the basis for his image as a can-do billionaire is an illusion.
Engoron warned Trump and his lawyers to keep their voices down after Trump “threw up his hands in frustration” and spoke loudly to his lawyers while a witness was testifying against him.
State lawyer Kevin Wallace asked Engoron to ask the defence to “stop commenting during the witness’ testimony,” adding that the “exhortations” were audible on the witness’ side of the room.
The judge then asked everyone to keep their voices down, “particularly if it’s meant to influence the testimony”.
During a break in proceedings, Trump wailed, breathless and wounded as a toddler whose sibling totally started it.
“See what’s happened? The government lied. They just lie. They didn’t reveal all of the information that they had,” he said during a break in the trial. “They didn’t reveal all the evidence that made me totally innocent of anything that they say.”
New York Attorney-General Letitia James brought the lawsuit against Trump, alleging that he inflated his assets and his net worth in the decade between 2011 and 2021 so as to obtain funds via favourable bank loans and lower insurance premiums. James is seeking fines of at least US$250 million.
In a pre-trial decision last month, Engoron ruled that Trump and his company, the Trump Organization, committed years of fraud by exaggerating his asset values and net worth on annual financial statements used to make deals and get better terms on loans and insurance. The trial involves six claims in James’ lawsuit that were not resolved in this pre-trial ruling, including allegations of conspiracy, insurance fraud and falsifying business records.
Trump has been in and out of court for this trial, having to skip out during an afternoon break on Tuesday to give a deposition in an unrelated lawsuit.
— With AAP
