Thread by @stewartbishop

Hello hello, back again at 60 Centre Street in Lower Manhattan for the trial of Donald Trump over the NYAG’s claims that the ex-president falsified his annual financial statements and defrauded business counterparties.

Trump expert and NYU accounting professor Eli Bartov took the witness stand for the entire day of trial yesterday and offered a blistering critique of the AG's claims. He's slated to continue his direct today.

Before Bartov continues his testimony today, Trump attorney Chris Kise is up defending against the AG's critiques about the scope of Bartov’s testimony and New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engorn’s limitations as to what he can testify to.

The AG's claims there was insufficient disclosure of all of Bartov’s opinions he testified to yesterday, and that he is speaking to things outside of his expertise.

Kise says Bartov is not offering opinions on the intent or state of mind of anyone.

“His testimony is whether he found any material misstatements in the SOFCs based on his understanding of GAAP or any other [relevant] accounting standards,” Kise says.

Kevin Wallace of the attorney general’s office contends that Bartov yesterday was indeed offering new opinions about Trump’s intent, opinions that were not disclosed in his expert reports.

Justice Engoron is going to give Trump a little room to maneuver here. Trump counsel Jesus Suarez resumes his direct of Bartov.

“As my report clearly indicates I hope, I did not find any evidence of material misstatements in the statements of financial condition,” Bartov says.

“The fact that a financial statement contains an error, if the error is inadvertent and would not...change the judgment of the user,...then it's not a material misstatement,” Bartov says.

As he did yesterday, but is doing again today for some reason, Suarez is walking Bartov through credit reports prepared by Trump lender Deutsche Bank, which lent Trump hundreds of millions of dollars from 2011 to 2021.

Deutsche Bank did its own valuation of Trump’s many real estate assets, the reports show, and valued them much lower that the former president did.

Suarez pulls up one report from 2018 I think, and asks Bartov what conclusion, if any, did he reach after reading the report with respect to what factored into Deutsche Bank’s lending decisions.

“They did not rely on the state of financial condition numbers, but relied on their own numbers, which were almost 50 percent lower than the numbers of the statements of financial condition,” Bartov says.

We're taking five.

Someone was asking about the appeals process, in the event that Trump loses at trial, and what that will look like.

Trump has already appealed Justice Engoron’s pretrial summary judgment ruling that found Trump liable for one count of fraud, ​as well as the imposition of gag orders preventing Trump and his counsel from publicly trashing the judge's principal law clerk.

In contrast to, say federal court, NY allows litigants to bring a number of interlocutory appeals, meaning appeals brought before the conclusion of a case at the trial court level.

Justice Engoron has said he's aiming to issue a decision with respect to this bench trial by late January. If it goes against Trump, he will no doubt bring another appeal at that point to the mid-level Appellate Division, First Department.

If Trump loses at the First Department, he can try to take his case to NY's highest court, the Court of Appeals. However, in most cases, the Court of Appeals, like the US Supreme Court, has the discretion to decide whether to hear an appeal or decline to review it.

Amid an argument over a hypothetical question Suarez was asking Bartov, we get to a central dispute in this case.

“To me the case isn’t about valuation, it's about the statements of financial condition,” Justice Engoron says. “Executive Law 62 12 says you can’t use false statements in business.”

“Respectfully then this is a rudderless ship,” Trump attorney Chris Kise says.

He says if the valuations were done correctly, meaning in line with GAAP, then there can't be a finding there was a material misstatement on Trump's financial statements.

“You can't just say it's a misstatement because you feel like it,” Kise says.

Trump attorney Alina Habba moves for a directed verdict, saying the AG hasn’t proven their case.

“Denied,” Justice Engoron says.

That's it for Suarez's direct. Louis Solomon of the AG's office is up for cross.

Bartov says he's charging $1350 an hour. He says he's spent about 650 hours working on this case. $877,500.

Things get heated on cross right away. Solomon is asking about an document with various accounting standards and he and Bartov start talking over each other.

"This document is not relevant to this case!" Bartov says, arguing that it didn't apply during the time at issue here.

“He‘s been on the stand for 15 minutes and you're already insulting him,” Kise tells Solomon. “He needs to ask proper questions and not be so hostile.”

Justice Engoron steps in and tells Bartov to just answer the questions he's asked.

That's a wrap for today (Fridays are half days in this trial). Bartov is slated to continue his testimony on Tuesday, while Trump himself is due to kick things off next week on Monday at 10 am ET.