Trump’s Sons Take the Stand

Keeping up with Trump’s court schedule is a dizzying task, since he faces two federal trials, a criminal trial in Georgia, and a separate civil trial and criminal trial in New York. (Oh, and he’s running for president.) To make things easier, we’ll be recapping the biggest Trump trial news at the end of each week.

This week, Donald Trump’s sons took the stand in his New York civil fraud trial, in which they are both co-defendants. Meanwhile, the former president’s attorneys were hard at work trying to delay the Department of Justice’s classified documents case down in Florida.

The New York attorney general’s civil fraud trial was really a family affair this week, as both of the former president’s sons—Don Jr. and Eric—denied participating in any scheme to overinflate their father’s net worth and the value of their family’s business. Trump, for his part, was not happy about his kids having to appear in court, posting a late-night Truth Social rant in which he called for Judge Arthur Engoron to “leave my children alone.”

Don Jr., the elder Trump brother, was up first to take the stand, deflecting responsibility to Trump Organization accountants throughout his testimony. The AG’s office contends that Don Jr. signed off on company financial statements and thereby was aware of the fraud at play. (Judge Engoron already ruled before the trial began that the company had committed fraud; at issue in the trial is who exactly was responsible, and to what extent.) Don Jr. argued that he had nothing to do with preparing the fraudulent financial documents, and simply trusted the team they had hired when he signed off on them . “The accountants worked on it, that’s what we pay them for,” he said. He denied knowing anything about a spreadsheet the prosecution showed him that was used to prepare the financial statements. When asked if he would say the same thing about spreadsheets used to prepare the statements in other years, he answered, “Rinse and repeat.” (After his testimony Thursday, he also reportedly asked the courtroom sketch artist to make him “look sexy,” according to Insider.)

Eric Trump was up next. In his testimony, he echoed his brother, claiming that he never worked on any company financial statements. But when the prosecution showed him an old email where an employee directly asked Eric for information about his father’s financials, Eric acknowledged that he had looked at the spreadsheet being used to prepare Trump’s financial statements, seemingly contradicting his earlier testimony.

Later, the prosecutor questioned Eric about a video call that came up in a separate Trump Organization executive’s testimony, in which Eric was allegedly discussing his father’s financial statements. It took place in 2021, after the AG’s investigation had already started, but Eric said he had no memory of such a call. “I get thousands of calls,” he said.

The former president’s daughter appealed a judge’s order that requires she testify at her father’s New York civil fraud trial—and it was swiftly denied in a short and sweet 11-word decision: “Application for interim stay pending decision on the motion is denied.” Looks like Ivanka will be joining her brothers on the witness stand next week, after all.

The former president’s daughter initially argued she’d face “undue hardship” by coming to New York because she is scheduled to appear in court “in the middle of a school week” for her three young children. Plus, she was removed as a co-defendant in the AG’s lawsuit after a judge decided that the claims against her were blocked by the state’s statue of limitations, since she left the Trump Organization in 2016. But since Ivanka worked as the company’s executive vice president from 2005, shortly after graduating from business school, up until her departure, New York AG Letitia James believes she “has firsthand knowledge of issues that are central to the ongoing trial.”

Ivanka is expected to testify on Wednesday, Nov. 8. The former president himself is also expected to take the witness stand next week.

Trump’s legal team has been pushing to delay his trials as much as possible, and Judge Aileen Cannon (a Trump appointee) suggested in a Florida hearing this week that she might be amenable to pushing back the trial in the Department of Justice’s classified documents case. The trial is currently scheduled for May 20, 2024, but Trump’s lawyers want it pushed to after the general election. This week, Cannon held a hearing to consider if the current trial schedule is doable.

Trump’s lawyers have argued that this trial is going to overlap with the DOJ’s other lawsuit against Trump—the election interference case—since that trial is scheduled for March 2024. “It’s very difficult to be trying to work with a client in one trial and simultaneously try to prepare that client for another trial,” said Chris Kise, a Trump lawyer who is working double time on the former president’s New York civil trial and his classified documents case.

Plus, they argued that going through the immense volume of discovery evidence in this case simply requires more time. (DOJ prosecutors included over 1 million documents.) And given the nature of the highly classified evidence, all lawyers involved in the case are required to get security clearance in order to review it—and a lawyer for Trump’s co-defendant, Walt Nauta, said he hasn’t received his clearance yet.

“I’m having a hard time seeing, realistically, how this work can be accomplished in this compressed time period,” Cannon said during the hearing in Florida.

The DOJ pushed back by arguing Trump is clearly trying to “intentionally derail” the timing of this trial. Cannon, however, wasn’t buying it, noting it’s an “unavoidable reality” that Trump’s trial schedules will collide. She expressed some frustration with DOJ prosecutor Jay Bratt, saying, “I’m not quite seeing in your position a level of understanding of our realities.”

The hearing concluded with Cannon saying that she will make “reasonable adjustments” to Trump’s classified documents trial schedule, without offering any specifics.

Trump is once again appealing the gag order that’s been reimposed on him in the DOJ’s election interference case. (You can catch up on the whole saga in last week’s edition of Keeping Up With the Trump Trials.)

Now the former president’s lawyers are arguing that the gag order should be paused until a higher court can decide whether it violates Trump’s First Amendment rights. If the appeals court doesn’t side with him, his legal team suggests he’ll take this fight all the way to the Supreme Court.

That’s … a new one? Lawyers for Harrison Floyd, one of Trump’s co-defendants in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ sprawling election interference case, signaled they plan to argue that the 2020 election was, in fact, stolen.

His lawyers are asking for access to evidence that could allow them to push back on the prosecution’s assertion, in the indictment, that Trump lost the election. They’ve issued subpoenas for Georgia’s mail-in ballots, absentee ballot applications, reports from Dominion Voting Systems, and an unredacted copy of the secretary of state’s investigative report on alleged election fraud at State Farm Arena.

(The Georgia State Election Board found no evidence of ballot fraud and the state conducted three recounts that reaffirmed Joe Biden’s victory. Investigations by the FBI and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation also turned up no evidence of widespread fraud, and numerous state courts also ruled against Trump in his team’s flurry of election-related lawsuits.)

Floyd, the former director of Black Voices for Trump, is accused of pressuring an election worker to hand over sensitive voter information. He’s charged with five felony counts. Three former Trump attorneys who had been implicated in the indictment—Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, and Jenna Ellis—have all pleaded guilty in the case.

In a court hearing on Friday, Floyd’s legal team defended this strategy. “I do not believe that we’re required to take what the state says is true and not be able to rebut it or contest it,” said Christopher Kachouroff, Floyd’s attorney. Judge Scott McAfee seemed stumped on how to strike a balance between allowing for defendants’ rights and those of government agencies that are tasked with protecting voter data.

The DA’s legal team argued that procuring all the documents that Floyd’s defense has requested is “unreasonable” and simply a “fishing expedition.” However, McAfee has asked the Georgia’s secretary of state’s office how long it would take to fulfill Floyd’s documents request and how much it would cost.