Eric Trump “got testy and raised his voice” as the New York attorney general’s office pressed him on his father’s financial statements on Thursday, according to NBC News.
Eric Trump took the witness stand after his brother, Donald Trump Jr., and similarly sought to distance himself from the Trump Organization financial statements that prompted New York Attorney General Letitia James’ $250 million fraud lawsuit.
Eric Trump testified that he had "never worked" on the Trump Organization's statement of financial condition and "didn't know anything about it until this case came to fruition."
"I don't think I ever saw or worked on a statement of financial condition," he said. "I don’t believe I would have known about it — not what I did."
He later got “agitated” when he was questioned about a decade-old email in which he said the distribution of a summary of Trump’s personal finances should be limited and whether the reference was to a statement of financial condition that he testified he didn’t know anything about, according to NBC.
“I was not personally aware of statement of financial condition and I did not work on a statement of financial condition,” he said.
“Eric finally cracks a little, raising his voice in saying, ‘we are a major corporation. Of course we had financial statements,’” MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin reported.
He was then shown an email sent to him by a Trump employee in 2013 telling him that the employee needed information from Eric Trump to put together his father’s statement of financial condition.
Asked again if he knew about the statement, Eric replied, “it appears that way.”
CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen tweeted that Eric, much like his brother, was “hammered” by the attorney general’s team on the stand: “Denies involvement in the financial statements. Immediately hit with emails to contrary.”
“Don Jr and Eric distance themselves from the Trump financial statements, found by Judge Engoron to be fraudulent,” wrote former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, who served on special counsel Bob Mueller’s team. “But as officers of the company, that is just not a ‘defense’ to operating a company engaged in fraud (which is what the judge already found).”
MSNBC legal analyst Katie Phang posited that “Junior and Eric seem to forget this is a bench trial, not a jury trial.”
“Judge Engoron is the finder of fact. So HE will decide the credibility of witnesses, among other important issues,” she wrote. “If these two blockheads think they can snow Engoron, they’re in for a rude awakening.”
