Trump fraud judge jokes 'Are we gonna be shot' hours after bomb threat as Trump watches closing arguments in NY civil trial
Pool/Reuters
- A "fertilizer bomb" threat against the judge nearly delayed closings in Trump's NY fraud trial.
- With Trump in attendance, the judge quipped, "Are we gonna be shot or something?"
- Judge Arthur Engoron made no specific mention of the bomb threat to his NY home.
Five hours after threats of a "fertilizer bomb" sent police rushing to his Long Island home, the judge in Donald Trump's New York civil fraud trial took the bench to preside over closing arguments without mentioning the incident to his packed courtroom.
But the judge, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, did make a brief quip — "Are we gonna be shot or something?" — as he waited for a small group of news photographers to be escorted in and out of the courtroom.
Trump himself watched, wearing a scornful expression, from the courtroom's defense table.
"We have a couple of reporters who would like to photograph — some of you anyway — so let's have them come in now," Engoron told court officers after sitting down.
A minute passed in uncomfortable silence, interrupted by the judge, who wondered aloud, "They're lining up? Are we gonna be shot or something? Trust me," he joked to the parties. "This will be painless."
A half-dozen pool photographers came, took a flurry of photos, and left, leaving the judge to note, "The subjects of that photography don't look any different than they did a month ago," the last time the parties were photographed in the courtroom.
"First we'll hear from the defendants," the judge then continued, beginning the proceeding at around 10:15 a.m.. "They'll have until 12:45," he told the parties.
He congratulated the small crowd of lawyers ringing the room's two conference tables for reaching the finish line in the lengthy case. Then he invited Trump's lead attorney, Christopher Kise, to approach a podium and begin.
"Not one witness came into this courtroom, your honor, and said they were a victim of fraud," Kise told the judge, starting his arguments.
The judge on Wednesday had denied the former president's request to deliver his own brief personal statement in addition to his lawyer's.
"The judge is not letting me make a summation," Trump had told reporters before going inside the courtroom to hear closings.
"I really have no rights," he complained.
Trump made no mention to the reporters of the judge's on-the-record rationale for not letting him deliver a closing statement.
Engoron had issued his denial shortly after noon on Wednesday after Trump failed to promise he would not use his statement to make a campaign speech or attack the court or the New York attorney general's office.
Trump was left to complain outside the courtroom, rather than inside, about the attorney general, Letitia James, who has pursued a fraud case against the former president since 2019.
"Letitia James, all she thinks about is 'get Trump,'" the former president told reporters in the hall outside the courtroom.
For more than three years, Engoron has presided over the New York attorney general's fraud investigation against Trump, his Manhattan-based real-estate empire, and four of his longstanding top executives — including his two eldest sons.
James alleges that Trump fraudulently inflated his net worth by as much as $3.6 billion dollars a year in annual net-worth statements issued to banks.
The frauds allow Trump to pocket $370 million dollars in loan-interest savings and asset-sale profits he would not have otherwise been entitled to, James has argued.
Trump and his lawyers have countered — as Kise told the judge early in his closing argument Thursday — that the case "is a manufactured claim to pursue a political agenda."
Closings were expected to take most of the day Thursday. The judge, who has already found the Trump and his co-defendants liable for rampant financial fraud, has said he will render a verdict by the end of the month.
The verdict will establish any monetary penalties and whether Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., Eric Trump, former CFO Allen Weisselberg, and former comptroller Jeffrey McConney conspired to break specific New York financial fraud statutes.