During his testimony in the New York fraud trial Thursday, Eric Trump got extremely agitated by questions asked of him by prosecutor Andrew Amer, especially when Amer showed him emails that suggested he was aware that incorrect financial statements were filed on behalf of the Trump Organization.
MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin noted that Eric’s demeanor was markedly different from his brother, Don Jr., who testified Wednesday, telling host Chris Jansing:
“It was sort of the tale of two brothers, because we think of Don Jr. and Eric as a pair, but really both temperamentally and otherwise, they would not be more different in their approaches to testimony today.”
“You noted earlier that Don Jr. on the stand principally deflected, denied responsibility, and put it all on the accountants and lawyers who guided him; he is a person who over the course of his life has been used to outsourcing things to other people,” Rubin continued. “But the problem is, as an officer of the company and particularly as a trustee of his father’s trust, there has to be a place where the buck stopped, and when his father was president, the buck stopped with he and Allen Weisselberg as the co co-trustees of the trust in which all the Trump Organization assets were put.”
Contrast that with Eric’s outburst, Rubin added:
“Eric on the other hand, when he took the stand, has been combative from the start,” she continued. “He doesn’t want to give an inch. He didn’t even want to admit that in 2012 he understood his father even had statements of financial condition. And so the attorney general is really working hard to establish that Eric understood that they sent their financial statements to other people outside the company who relied upon them, whether that’s members of a golf club in North Carolina that the Trumps purchased in 2012 or to banks and others.
“When Eric was about to get off the stand, he finally showed a flash of Trumpian anger and basically said, ‘Of course we have financial statements, we’re a major corporation!’ But he’s been generally calm and collected if not particularly generous in his testimony so far.”
Rubin explained on Twitter that Eric’s remarks are damaging for his father and the family company.
Eric finally cracks a little, raising his voice in saying, “We are a major corporation. Of course we had financial statements!”
— Lisa Rubin (@lawofruby) November 2, 2023
And finally, Amer gets the admission he wants: that at least by the time of his 2013 communications with McConney, Eric understood that his father had statements of financial condition with which his help was needed.
— Lisa Rubin (@lawofruby) November 2, 2023
That testimony makes it clear that Donald Trump was indeed part of manipulating those financial statements (which were inflated for the purpose of obtaining bank loans and then decreased to reduce the company’s tax bill). It also proves that Eric’s father personally requested “help” with them. That completely undermines the Trump defense that they had no idea fraud was taking place.
In other words, Eric destroyed his father’s key defense plank and gave prosecutors everything they need to impose a financial death penalty on the Trump Organization.