Closing summary
The hearing is over for today but Donald Trump Jr will be back in the stand tomorrow, followed by his brother Eric.
Today, the prosecution set the ground for their case that Trump Jr was an essential figure in the creation of the documents that proved his father’s fortune.
Trump Jr consistently downplayed his involvement. He told the court: “The accountants worked on it. That’s why we pay them.”
Here’s a quick glance back at what else happened in court today:
Donald Trump Jr answered several questions with “I don’t recall”, including queries about the roles he, his father and Allen Weisselberg had as trustees of the Donald J Trump Revocable Trust. He has said he does not recall much, including why there was a brief period in 2021 when he had resigned and then been restored on to the trust.
Michiel McCarty, an expert witness for the prosecution, told the court the Trump Organization’s lenders lost just over $168m due to fudged financial statements. Trump’s lawyers have been arguing through cross examination that the lenders had good relationships with the Trump Organization and had profited off their loans.
On the trial’s first day, the attorney general’s office played during their opening argument a series of video clips from depositions of defendants and witnesses, including one of Donald Trump Jr. In the video, Don Jr denies doing work that would have involved utilizing GAAP. The attorney general’s office is arguing that this is not true. The AG’s office submitted this clip into evidence for the day, implying it will become part of questioning.
Donald Trump Jr denied playing a role in the creation of a statement of financial condition from 2017, one of the financial documents at the center of the case. Prosecutor Colleen Faherty put a copy of the 2017 statement up on the court’s screen.
Trump Jr said that while he might have been asked for information about the assets that would be used to create the statements, he was not involved in filling them out.
“They could’ve asked me on any given day what deal was going on” and he would have had the “intimate knowledge” about the assets but had maybe not even known they would be used for the statements.
Court has adjourned for the day in the middle of this line of questioning. It will be back in session tomorrow at 10 am.
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