Dec. 5, 2023 - Epoch Times
04:42
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| The ongoing legal battle that President Trump is facing right here in New York experienced, you could say, a bit of a twist. | |
| That's because the testimony that was given by an executive from Deutsche Bank, it appeared to completely shatter the narrative that was being pushed by Ms. | |
| Letitia James, the attorney general of New York. | |
| However, in order to explain the significance of what this executive said while on the witness stand, well, I need to quickly set the stage for you regarding this entire lawsuit. | |
| As you may know, included among the myriad of different legal cases that have been lobbied against President Trump, you have the case, which was brought forth by the New York Attorney General, Ms. | |
| Letitia James. | |
| This 200-page civil lawsuit was brought forth back in September of last year, and it accuses President Trump In her lawsuit, Ms. | |
| James claimed that over a 10-year period, from 2011 through 2021, President Trump and the other defendants had engaged in numerous acts of fraud and misrepresentation in the preparation of Mr. | |
| Trump's annual statements of financial condition, which included deceiving insurers, tax officials, and lenders by allegedly inflating the value of his properties, including his Mar-a-Lago estate over in Florida. | |
| Ms. | |
| Letitia James claims that this lawsuit of hers is the result of a three-year-long investigation, and here's specifically what she's hoping to achieve with the actual case. | |
| Okay, so the basic claim here, being made by the New York Attorney General, is that President Trump and his company, they inflated being made by the New York Attorney General, is that President Trump and his company, they inflated the value of their assets in order | |
| Meaning, that despite the fact that these banks conducted their own due diligence, despite the fact that after conducting that due diligence, they gave the Trump Organization these loans, Despite the fact that these loans and all of the interest on the loans were paid back in full, and despite the fact that these banks themselves appear to want nothing to do with these lawsuits, well, Letitia James still decided to sue the Trump Organization on behalf of the banks, which, just as an aside, was actually the fulfillment of a campaign promise that she made while running for Attorney General. | |
| Take a listen. | |
| We will all rise up and resist this man! | |
| ultimately will bring him down. | |
| Donald Trump has got to go. | |
| Hey, hey, ho, ho. | |
| Donald Trump has got to go. | |
| Hey, hey, ho, ho. | |
| And the day of Donald Trump is over. | |
| Lock him up. | |
| Lock him up! | |
| Now, for his part, over the past month and a half now that the case has been at trial, President Trump, as well as his legal team, have been maintaining the position that these loans were negotiated fairly, that the interest and the principal was paid off in full, and that the only reason that Letitia James filed this lawsuit at all was for political purposes. | |
| However, up until now, everything in this case has been from the prosecution side, meaning that the Attorney General's office has been the one calling forth all the witnesses. | |
| But right now, it's the defense's turn to call witnesses. | |
| And that they did. | |
| Yesterday, Trump's legal team, they called an executive from Deutsche Bank to the witness stand, and this executive's testimony... | |
| Well, it really called into question the entire premise of Letitia James' argument. | |
| Specifically, Mr. | |
| David Williams, who directly worked on at least one of the loans that were obtained by Trump from the bank, he testified that it's not unusual for there to be a discrepancy between the bank's assessment of a property and that of the client's. | |
| Quote, who worked on at least one of the three loans Deutsche Bank made to Trump in the years before he was elected president, testified on Tuesday that it's atypical but not entirely unusual for the bank to cut a client's stated asset value by 50% and approve the loan anyway, as it did with Trump. | |
| Furthermore, there were several exchanges during the questioning phase, which revealed something that frankly most people in real estate already know, which is that during the loan process, there is a natural back and forth between the client and the bank, wherein the client tries to provide the highest valuation of their asset possible, while the bank tries to lowball the value, and they meet somewhere in the middle. | |
| Quote, According to internal bank credit memos used as evidence in the case, Deutsche Bank, which loaned Trump hundreds of millions of dollars for properties in Miami, Chicago, and Washington, cut a stated net worth in 2011 and 2012 from about $4.2 billion to $2.3 billion when evaluating his loan requests. | |
| The same documents show that the bank approved the loans anyway because it expected them to generate a profit based on Trump's history of successful developments and other criteria. |
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