Eric Trump testifies in New York fraud trial

Well, welcome back. Eric Trump has taken the witness stand for the second day today. The former president's son has testified in the New York civil suit that has been brought against his family's business empire. Attorney General Letitia James and her team accusing Trump's sons of being complicit in this scheme to actually inflate the value of Trump businesses. It's an allegation that the sons deny. Our Aaron Katursky is live in New York. Once again, he's been following this from the very beginning. So what did I guess, what more did we hear from Eric? We got about an hour's worth of testimony from Eric Trump today, Kyra. And there was a focus on Mar-a-Lago, the former president's Palm Beach estate that was valued at about twenty seven million dollars, even though former President Trump has said as recently as last week, it's probably worth a billion dollars or more because it's such a unique piece of property. And even as Eric Trump has denied having much involvement in the statements of financial condition, these documents that are at the heart of the case that, you know, pumped up the former president's net worth, there was email shown to Eric Trump in court where he's actively discussing how to value Mar-a-Lago. And it turns out that it was both valued as a private residence where it could be worth tens of millions of dollars potentially as a private estate. But when it came time to paying taxes, the Trumps had it taxed, had it listed for tax purposes as a social club with a much lower commercial tax rate. And that seemed to make the attorney general's point that Trump adjusted the value of his assets to suit his business purposes. You know, Aaron, we've talked about this before, but I'll ask it again. Is that that uncommon? New York City real estate, big, big time real estate. You know, you actually don't know the value of a piece of property until you put it on the market and somebody buys it. That's the value. Right. And it does. I think the people who are concerned or questioning this case, they're wondering how, how extreme was it? I mean, was it way out of bounds, this inflation of the value of assets? And can they prove that it went beyond what is really the ordinary practice of not just real estate moguls, but homeowners, right? They list a house for a lot more than it's worth. They cross their fingers and see what happens. And usually they bargain down to a lower price. I see Terry has been trying to sell his house. The fairly, though, he's been very honest about the price there. And let's just make that clear. Of course he has. You know, the Trumps have said that valuing real estate is more art than than science. But the judge has said some of the valuations clearly were egregious. The Trumps said that, for example, the Fifth Avenue penthouse apartment in Trump Tower was 30,000 square feet worth $327 million. There's never been an apartment in New York City that's sold for that much money anywhere close. And the actual square footage of the apartment is $10,000. And the judge has said that that's that's not just a mistake. That's not just, you know, a pipe dream type valuation. That's actual fraud. So in some cases, the valuations the judge has said were, in fact, quite egregious. Well, we just got news that Ivanka Trump is going to testify now next week. So what do you think we can expect from her testimony? And will she sort of stay in line with her brothers? I would imagine she would, based upon her earlier deposition that she gave to the attorney general's office. Like her brothers, Ivanka Trump denies having intimate knowledge of the statements of financial condition that inflated her father's wealth simply because she said she just wasn't that deeply involved. She left it to others, the accountants, the legal department. And that's been a hallmark of the Trump children. Yes, they ran the company. They were the executive vice presidents, you know, right beneath their father in the hierarchy. But that level, they didn't really bother with the granular kind of details. Ivanka Trump tried to get out of testimony. She said doing so in the middle of a school week would be a hardship on her family. But the appellate court denied her appeal. And so she's going to be testifying on Wednesday after her father testifies on Monday. All right. It's going to be a family reunion. Quite different from when they all came together for the campaign. Now they're all from campaign to courtroom. There you go. You never want to be in a courtroom.