Trump bails out of fraud trial on 3rd day: He came, he scowled, he got gagged, and left
Donald Trump left his NY business fraud trial Wednesday after attending for two and a half days.
Seth Wenig/AP
- Donald Trump left his NY business fraud trial Wednesday after attending for two and a half days.
- In that time, he held multiple hallway press conferences and was hit with a limited gag order.
- Trump must return in the coming weeks to testify in the $250 million civil trial, brought by the NY AG.
Exit, Donald Trump.
After two and a half days of scowling inside — and angrily speechifying just outside — of a Manhattan courtroom, the former president on Wednesday left his $250 million civil fraud trial.
He doesn't have to return until he testifies, by order of a New York state subpoena, some weeks from now.
"I'd rather be right now in Iowa," Trump said in a parting shot to reporters at the start of the lunch break, mid-way through the trial's first week.
"I'm stuck here because I have a corrupt attorney general who communicates with the Justice Department to keep me busy," he said, leaving the third-floor courtroom, where the future of his real estate empire will be decided over the next two to three months.
New York Attorney General Letitia James has sued Trump, his eldest sons, and his real-estate empire, Trump Organization, alleging he falsely inflated the value of his properties by as much as $3.6 billion a year in official statements to banks, insurers, and others.
"The Trump show is over," James, who has also attended the trial, told reporters after her lead defendant's departure.
"I will not be bullied," she added of Trump, who has repeatedly blasted her as "racist" – criticizing the former president for turning the trial into a "political stunt" and "fundraising stop."
Pool/Getty Images.
By Day 3, Trump was ready to leave
Trump had appeared to run out of steam by Wednesday morning.
He dilly-dallied returning to the courtroom after a mid-morning break, letting one of his attorneys question the witness on the stand without him. He strolled in during the middle of the cross-examination. At that point, there was only a short while left before the court's 1 p.m. lunch break.
Over the break, Trump flew the coop. New York Police Department officers dismantled the barriers around the courthouse, indicating it was liberated from the grip of the US Secret Service, which had taken over security measures. Three officers told Insider that they didn't expect Trump to return tomorrow, or else they would have left the barriers in place.
Trump's antics in front of the press cameras just outside the courtroom's double doors has often upstaged the plodding and laborious financial testimony inside, where camera use is limited.
During his Secret Service-chaperoned half-week in residence at the trial, Trump attacked the attorney general and the judge — in addition to off-topic diatribes against President Biden and Special Counsel Jack Smith.
Trump earned a limited gag order on Tuesday when he singled out the judge's principal law clerk – including in a disparaging Truth Social post and campaign email that identified her by name and photo and linked to her Instagram account.
The clerk is "running this case against me," read the post, which reached millions of his followers before being taken down. "How disgraceful!"
The gag bars all parties in the case from "posting or publicly speaking about any member of my staff," Engoron said from the bench, warning of "swift, meaningful sanctions" if that happens again.
He also falsely claimed that the judge had thrown out "80 percent" of the AG's case, and had crazily "valued" Mar-a-Lago at only $18 million. The judge had actually quoted that figure from a decade-old assessment on the Palm Beach tax books.
"Please, press, stop saying that I valued it at $18 million. That was a tax assessment," the judge said Monday, asking the media to stop repeating the claim.
On Wednesday afternoon, Trump bristled on his way out when a reporter asked him why he was attending if he'd rather be campaigning.
"Why attend?" he shot back. "I want to point it out to the press how corrupt it is because no one else is able to do it.
Meanwhile, testimony inside is expected to plod on.
By the lunch break on Wednesday, the second day of testimony by Trump Org's longtime outside accountant, Donald Bender, had become so repetitive that the judge snapped at Trump's lawyers for slowing down the testimony.
When Trump's lawyer said Wednesday morning that he would be done with Bender by the end of the day, there was exhausted laughter throughout the room.
In the afternoon Camron Harris, of the tax and audit firm Whitley Penn, took the stand.