New York University accounting professor gave testimony for the former president this week.
Several law experts suggested that former President Donald Trump’s recent choice of expert witness was a smart move in his New York civil fraud trial.
With testimony winding down after more than two months, the Republican 2024 presidential front-runner showed up to watch New York University accounting professor Eli Bartov’s testimonial.
The academic disputed the crux of New York State Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit: that President Trump’s financial statements were filled with fraudulently inflated asset values for such signature assets as his Trump Tower penthouse and his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.
“My main finding is that there is no evidence whatsoever of any accounting fraud,” Mr. Bartov, whom Trump’s lawyers tapped to give expert perspective, told the court. The former president’s financial statements, he said, “were not materially misstated.”
Anything problematic, such as a huge year-to-year leap in the estimated value of the Trump Tower triplex, was merely an error, he argued. He also testified that financial statements are just starting points for lenders and that the documents’ value estimates are inherently subjective opinions. Differences in such opinions don’t mean that there’s fraud, the professor said.
The attorney general’s office has also hired Mr. Bartov as an expert in the past. In 2019, he testified as an expert witness for prosecutors as part of a James lawsuit that accused oil giant ExxonMobil of downplaying financial risks related to climate regulation, although Ms. James ended up losing the case.
Legal analyst Lisa Rubin, who said she attended the trial in New York on Thursday, said that Mr. Bartov also appeared to charm the judge, Arthur Engoron, who is presiding over the case because the two have a “shared NYU affiliation.” Mr. Bartov teaches accounting at the university, while Judge Engoron received his law degree there.
“Engoron qualifies him in all subjects, with the note that he is qualified in valuation insofar as it relates to accounting,” Ms. Rubin wrote on X, formerly called Twitter, on Thursday. She added that the judge dismissed prosecutors’ objections regarding his qualifications.
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