Donald Trump’s longtime finance chief Allen Weisselberg was giving evidence on Tuesday in the civil trial in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ fraud lawsuit against the Republican former president and his company.Weisselberg helped spare Mr Trump’s real estate empire from its last existential threat, staving off insolvency after casino bankruptcies and an airline failure in the 1990s.
Weisselberg said he recalled seeing the email but not the attachment, explaining that the attachments were documents he already had on file in the company’s offices. But in any event, he said, he did not pay much attention to the apartment’s size because its value amounted to a fraction of Mr Trump’s wealth.“It was not something that was that important to me when looking at a six billion, five billion net worth.
Mr Trump, who attended the first three days of the non-jury trial last week in Manhattan, is not expected to return to court to see his former chief financial officer testify. Weisselberg, 76, testified that he was having trouble sleeping, started seeing a therapist and was taking a generic form of Valium as he tried to “reacclimate myself back to society”.
In a pre-trial ruling last month, Judge Arthur Engoron found that Mr Trump, Weisselberg and other defendants committed years of fraud by exaggerating the value of Mr Trump’s assets and net worth on his financial statements.