The night before he was scheduled to testify as one of the final defense witnesses in his months long $250 million civil fraud trial, which is ramping up to its final week of testimony, Donald Trump is saying that he has no plans of returning to testify in his own defense.
In a thread of all caps messages rattled off on Truth Social Sunday night, Trump expressed his reasons for making this last minute decision, saying:
"THEY CLAIMED THAT MAR-A-LAGO WAS WORTH ONLY $18,000,000, WHEN IT IS WORTH 50 TO 100 TIMES THAT AMOUNT, IN ORDER TO ILLEGALLY REDUCE MY VALUES & MAKE A FAKE CASE AGAINST ME. THEY DID THIS ON OTHER PROPERTIES, AS WELL, & WOULDN’T GIVE ME A JURY. LIKEWISE, THE A.G. THUGS DO NOT WANT TO ACKNOWLEDGE THAT I HAVE PAID ALMOST 300 MILLION DOLLARS IN NEW YORK CITY & STATE TAXES DURING THE YEARS IN QUESTION. IMPORTANTLY, I WON AT THE APPELLATE DIVISION, WHICH EFFECTIVELY ENDED MOST OF THE CASE, BUT THE BIASED JUDGE REFUSED TO ACCEPT THEIR ORDER, AN UNHEARD OF FIRST! BASED ON THE ABOVE, AND THE FACT THAT OUR UNASSAILABLE FINAL EXPERT WITNESS HAS BEEN SO STRONG AND IRREFUTABLE IN HIS TESTIMONY, WHICH WILL CONCLUDE ON TUESDAY, & THAT I HAVE ALREADY TESTIFIED TO EVERYTHING & HAVE NOTHING MORE TO SAY OTHER THAN THAT THIS IS A COMPLETE & TOTAL ELECTION INTERFERENCE (BIDEN CAMPAIGN!) WITCH HUNT, THAT WILL DO NOTHING BUT KEEP BUSINESSES OUT OF NEW YORK, I WILL NOT BE TESTIFYING ON MONDAY. MAGA!"
In a response to this change of heart, New York Attorney General Letitia James issued a statement of her own, saying, "Whether or not Trump testifies again tomorrow, we have already proven that he committed years of financial fraud and unjustly enriched himself and his family. No matter how much he tries to distract from reality, the facts don’t lie."
