Former US president says he has ‘nothing extra to say’ after testifying in his defence final month.
Former United States President Donald Trump has determined in opposition to testifying for a second time at his civil fraud trial in New York, saying he has “nothing extra to say”.
Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination within the 2024 presidential election, stated on Sunday that he noticed no must testify as he had achieved so “very efficiently & conclusively” final month.
“I’ve already testified to the whole lot & don’t have anything extra to say,” Trump stated in a publish on his Fact Social platform.
Trump had been anticipated to take the witness stand on Monday within the case involving allegations that the previous president, his relations and workers inflated the worth of actual property property by billions of {dollars} to obtain extra beneficial financial institution loans and insurance coverage phrases.
Trump lawyer Christopher Kise stated there was “actually nothing extra to say to a decide who has imposed an unconstitutional gag order and up to now seems to have ignored President Trump’s testimony and that of everybody else concerned within the complicated monetary transactions at situation within the case”.
New York Lawyer Common Letitia James, who filed the lawsuit, stated her workplace had already confirmed Trump “dedicated years of monetary fraud and unjustly enriched himself and his household.
“Irrespective of how a lot he tries to distract from actuality, the information don’t lie.”
In a defiant and combative look on November 6, Trump clashed with prosecutors for greater than three and a half hours as he defended his wealth and denied wrongdoing.
Choose Arthur Engoron has already dominated that James’s workplace has offered “conclusive proof” that Trump overstated his web value by between $812m and $2.2bn and ordered the liquidation of a number of firms managing the property in query.
Engoron, whom Trump has branded “hostile” and a “political hack”, in October slapped the previous president with $15,000 in fines for violating a partial gag order imposed over disparaging remarks posted on-line in regards to the decide’s regulation clerk.
Trump has branded the proceedings, which don’t carry the danger of legal penalties resembling jail time, as a partisan “witch hunt”.
The trial, which can proceed with out Trump’s testimony, is predicted to conclude in January.
