With Donald Trump’s testimony looming on Monday in his company’s complex civil fraud trial, his two sons Donald Jr. and Eric were pressed by the New York Attorney General’s office in back-to-back appearances on the stand last week.
The two younger Trumps ran the Trump Organization while their father was President, and are among the co-defendants in a case that could spell the end of the company’s New York operations. Lawyers with Letitia James’ office presented evidence seeking to challenge claims that the brothers were not involved with the former president’s fraudulently inflated statements of financial condition.
Donald Trump Jr. was one of the executive Vice Presidents of his father’s company, yet he testified that he never worked on his father’s financial statements. He said he signed off on some of them in his capacity as a trustee of the company’s assets (which was organized once his father entered the White House) but left the work to others and deferred to their judgment on the matter.
Eric Trump, meanwhile, was confronted with emails sent to him from 2010 that went against his claim that he was never involved with or never knew much about the company’s financial statements. He also admitted that he knew about other statements made in the past. Another Trump executive said that as recently as 2021, Eric was on a call regarding such financial statements. Eric continued to say he had no involvement in either instance.
Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka, another former Trump Organization executive, is scheduled to testify on the 8th of this month. But her lawyers on Wednesday appealed Judge Arthur Engoron‘s decision to require her to take the stand.
With a tense courtroom atmosphere so far, everyone seems to be waiting with bated breath until the patriarch finally speaks in court.
