‘Control your client, or I will’: Judge loses patience with Donald Trump’s court rants

Donald Trump sat in the witness box, his head tilted to one side and his lips pursed, as a furious judge berated him and his team of lawyers. He looked like a child being scolded in front of his friends.

Former US president Donald Trump prepares to testify during his trial at New York State Supreme Court ion Monday. Picture: AFP

Donald Trump sat in the witness box, his head tilted to one side and his lips pursed in a smile, as a furious judge berated him and his team of lawyers. He looked like a child being scolded in front of his friends.

Trump, a character who sprang from the New York of the 1980s, was wearing a voluminous blue suit, a light blue shirt and a blue tie, his blond hair white under the lights.

Next to him, a little above him, sat Arthur Engoron, who is regularly described by Trump on social media as a “Trump-hating judge”.

Trump started testifying before the judge at 10am on Monday. By a quarter past the judge was exasperated, begging Trump to answer the question and stop making speeches about his presidency and all the prosecutors in the land that were out to get him.

Trump is accused of overstating the value of his assets to ­obtain better loan deals from banks and insurance companies. On the witness stand, he argued that there were disclaimers in his financial statements, and that his assets were actually worth more, not less, than he had claimed. He pulled one of these disclaimers from his pocket and in a brief flash of formality said: “I would like to read this, your honour, if I could. Am I allowed to do that?” The judge ­replied: “No, not at this point.”

Otherwise Trump appeared broadly unconfined by decorum or the questions that he was asked, ranging freely through stories about his presidency and his beloved business. He could easily have done both at the same time, he said, but he decided to place the business in a trust after his election to the White House.

Donald Trump speaks to the media after testifying. Picture: Getty Images

“George Washington, he had two desks, one for business, one for the presidency. I could do that, but I didn’t like to do it,” he said.

Trump answered a question about whether he liked looking at his financial statements by saying: “It was nice to see. Then he added: “I have essentially $US342m worth of cash. That’s a lot of cash. The banks come to me, they want to make deals with me.”

“Stricken! Stricken!” Engoron cried. There followed a monologue on the “hold-up value” of a building he owns leases for beside Trump Tower, “the best location in New York City”, which he felt was worth more ­because Tiffany’s next door could not expand without doing a deal with him. There was also a lengthy account, unasked for but given by Trump, about something he referred to as a “lollipop” in the contract for his building on Wall Street, which meant he could turn it into flats.

The lollipop seemed to drive the judge over the edge. Engoron turned to Trump’s lawyer, Christopher Kise. “That was a simple yes or no,” the judge said. “I ­beseech you to control him if you can. If you can’t, I will. I will ­excuse him and I will draw every negative inference that I can. You understand that?”

Kise leapt to his feet saying surely, of all witnesses, “you would want to hear everything this witness has to say”. The judge exclaimed: “No, I do not!”

Trump nevertheless continued, insisting on the extraordinary value of his properties.

“Aberdeen is the oil capital of Europe,” he declared, when asked about land there that seemed to have risen rapidly in value.

“Irrelevant,” the judge cried.

After lunch, Trump described the case as a “disgrace”, claiming: “Many people are leaving New York because of exactly this sort of thing.” Perhaps not all of them had been accused of overstating assets. But “you have everybody being killed in the streets”, he said. “And you have an Attorney-­General sitting here all day long. People are fleeing the city!”

Trump then turned to lawyer Kevin Wallace, the man questioning him. “You should be ashamed of yourself,” he said, before nodding, quite civilly, and inviting him to “go ahead”.

Asked if the conviction of his chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, for tax fraud caused him to reconsider financial statements, Trump said it was “a very sad thing, he did a great job for me”. He was unsure if a replacement had been sought, saying: “I would have to ask my two sons.”

Then the questions were over.

“We will excuse this witness,” Engoron said, fluttering his fingers in the sort of wave a host might make when he has tired of a guest and wants to push him out.

The Times