NEW YORK — Former President Donald Trump has misplaced his newest bid to finish the enterprise fraud lawsuit he faces in New York as he campaigns to reclaim the White House.
Judge Arthur Engoron issued a written ruling Monday denying the Republican’s newest request for a verdict in his favor in a lawsuit introduced by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
And in doing so, the choose dismissed the credibility of one in all Trump’s skilled witnesses on the trial, a professor who testified that he noticed no fraud within the former president’s monetary statements.
The trial is centered on allegations Trump and different firm officers exaggerated his wealth and inflated the worth of his belongings to safe loans and shut enterprise offers.
In the three-page ruling, Engoron wrote that the “most glaring” flaw of Trump’s argument was to imagine that the testimony supplied by Eli Bartov, an accounting professor at New York University, and different skilled witnesses could be accepted by the courtroom as “true and accurate.”
“Bartov is a tenured professor, but the only thing his testimony proves is that for a million or so dollars, some experts will say whatever you want them to say,” Engoron wrote.
Bartov, who was paid almost $900,000 for his work on the trial, mentioned in an e mail that the choose had mischaracterized his testimony.
Trump took to his protection, calling Engoron’s feedback about Bartov a “great insult to a man of impeccable character and qualifications” as he excoriated the choose’s resolution.
“Judge Engoron challenges the highly respected Expert Witness for receiving fees, which is standard and accepted practice for Expert Witnesses,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.
During testimony earlier this month, Bartov disputed the legal professional basic’s claims that Trump’s monetary statements had been full of fraudulently inflated values for such signature belongings as his Trump Tower penthouse and his Mar-a-Lago membership in Florida.
Bartov mentioned there was “no evidence whatsoever of any accounting fraud.”
But Engoron, in his ruling Monday, famous that he had already dominated that there have been “numerous obvious errors” in Trump’s monetary statements.
“By doggedly attempting to justify every misstatement, Professor Bartov lost all credibility,” the choose wrote.
In an e mail to The Associated Press, Bartov mentioned he by no means “remotely implied” on the trial that Trump‘s monetary statements had been “accurate in every respect,” solely that the errors had been inadvertent and there was “no evidence of concealment or forgery.”
Bartov additionally argued that he billed Trump at his normal price.
Closing arguments are scheduled for Jan. 11 in Manhattan.
• Associated Press reporter Michael Sisak in New York contributed to this story.
