New York, United States, Jan 11 (EFE). – Former President Donald Trump (2017-2021) on Thursday claimed his innocence on the last day of his civil fraud trial in New York, after the judge presiding over the case, Arthur Engoron, allowed him to speak despite having said the day before that he would not be allowed to participate in the closing arguments.
After a brief 15-minute recess in the session, Trump’s attorneys again asked the judge to allow their client to speak, to which the judge agreed, but only after warning the former president that he should stick to the subject matter of the trial.
A day earlier, he had specified that Trump’s remarks needed to be restricted to “relevant, material facts that are in evidence, and application of the relevant law to those facts.”
“I’m an innocent man,” Trump said from the microphone at the table where he was seated with his lawyers and then went on to repeat previous attacks against New York Attorney General Letitia James, who brought the fraud charges against him, his two eldest children and two other Trump Organization officials.
“There was not one witness who went against us,” Trump said, without getting up from his chair, and reiterated that this was a “political witch hunt,” an argument that had been used earlier in the trial by his lawyer, Christopher Kise, who attacked the prosecutor throughout the trial, claiming that she had not presented evidence against his client.
“What happened here, sir, is a fraud on me,” Trump insisted, citing political reasons: “They want to make sure that I don’t win again and this is partially election interference.”
During the first part of the hearing, Kise argued that no financial institution has issued a report of misconduct, suspicious or fraudulent activity against his client and that there are no victims of the alleged fraud.
“You just cannot allow the attorney general to pursue a victimless fraud and impose the corporate death penalty,” Kise told a packed courtroom that required a second courtroom to be set up for reporters.
The judge had already found all the defendants guilty of fraud, the main charge, in a pretrial ruling.
Kise, who praised his client, challenged the figure prosecutors said Trump and the other defendants should pay in fines for the alleged fraud.
Prosecutors had initially asked for $250 million, but a week ago rose it to $370 million, arguing that Trump should pay more because it was proven at trial that he made illegal profits, a figure Kise said was “total speculation.”
At the end of his arguments before the first break of the day, Kise told Engoron, “This decision is not just about President Trump. What you do, judge, impacts every corporation in New York.” EFE
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