Judge Loses His Cool at Trump's Legal Team, Pounds Table as He Exclaims 'This Is Ridiculous'
The judge presiding over the New York civil fraud case against Donald Trump was obviously annoyed by the former president’s legal team during cross-examination of an important witness Wednesday.
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron slammed his hand on the table and exclaimed “This is ridiculous” as Trump’s lawyers got deep into the weeds with Mazars USA partner David Bender, whom they accused of not answering their questions, according to the New York Post.
“Don’t waste time,” the judge added, as defense lawyers argued they had to go through their client’s records “year by year” with the witness.
Trump’s legal team had already spent “part of Tuesday afternoon and all of Wednesday morning” going through Bender’s testimony, and when they said he would be on the stand for the rest of the day, that’s when the judge lost his cool.
“This is ridiculous!” he said. “Mr. Bender isn’t on trial here.”
“We need to be allowed to parse the evidence,” Trump attorney Christopher Kise argued. “We didn’t bring this case.”
A second Trump lawyer, Alina Habba, argued that Bender had been uncooperative.
“We haven’t got one answer from him,” she said. “He has no memory as we sit here.”
Kise eventually agreed to try “to streamline” their questioning, to which the judge responded by again saying, “Let’s not waste time.”
Engoron suggested that Trump’s lawyers were engaged in the type of courtroom theatrics that would be calculated to impress a jury — or perhaps the media — but weren’t helpful in a bench trial that would be decided by the judge alone.
“There is no jury here,” he told the Trump team at least once, later asking, “Who are you talking to — me, the press or the audience?”
Wednesday was the third day of the trial in which the former president stands accused of having lied about his total assets to the tune of billions in an attempt to negotiate better deals on loans and insurance coverage.
Although he is not required to be present in the courtroom as he would in a criminal trial, Trump has appeared for the first three days of the trial, although he left at lunch Wednesday for Florida.
Trump has repeatedly referred to the trial itself as fraud and an attempt at political persecution aimed at forcing him out of the 2024 presidential race.
“He already knows what he’s going to do,” Trump told reporters Wednesday, referring to Engoron, according to Reuters.
Engoron has already ruled that Trump, along with his two adult sons, were guilty of fraudulently inflating their net worth. Trump’s team filed an appeal of that decision Wednesday.
The current proceedings are largely to determine damages, which could be such that they could “dismantle Trump’s business empire,” Reuters reported.
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