Eric Trump, echoing his older brother Donald Trump Jr.'s testimony, said Thursday at his father's Manhattan civil fraud trial that he wasn't engaged with his dad's financial accounts.
State attorney Andrew Amer repeatedly asked the 39-year-old Eric whether he had any role in creating the former president's declarations of financial status, which are at the heart of the fraud prosecution. Eric's testimony was noticeably more tense than Don Jr.'s, as the New York Post reported.
After the completion of the hearing, Justice Arthur Engoron got into an argument with Trump's attorney Christopher Kise, suggesting that the lawyer might be misogynistic for frequently alluding to his female law clerk.
The judge threatened to extend the gag order he had placed against Trump to include his legal team as well.
The Suit
Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, is suing the 45th president, his sons Eric and Donald Jr., and the Trump Organization for $250 million.
Her suit is predicated on allegations that Trump, then 77 years old, inflated his assets by billions of dollars every year between 2011 and 2021 in order to obtain more favorable loan and insurance terms.
“I never had anything to do with the statement of financial condition,” said Eric, an executive vice president at the Trump Organization.
“People ask me questions all the time, but I never worked on the statement of financial condition," he added.
When questioned about the statements from 2012, Eric responded: “I was 26 years old at the time, I don’t recall what I knew at the time, but I never worked on it and didn’t know anything about it until this case came into fruition.”
The Questioning
Throughout the interrogation, he and Amer clashed, with the former raising his voice and the latter lashing back at him. Amer spent a lot of time challenging Eric with emails and other information that suggested Eric knew about his father's financial statements.
“We’re a major organization, a massive real estate organization, [and] of course I understand we have financial statements, absolutely,” Eric loudly told Amer right before a lunch break.
“I had no involvement, nor never worked on my father’s statement of financial condition.”
After the break, the real estate heir spoke calmly, explaining that there were distinct differences between financial records and annual statements of financial situation.
Amer continue to attempt to do away with the former first son's credibility, trying to prove that the former president and his family acted fraudulently for their own gain.
