Good evening today in his New York civil fraud trial knowingly or not the

former president swung a wrecking ball at a pillar of his defense namely

that he left the question of how much pieces of his business empire worth to the

accountants or in the words of his co-defendant son

Eric I poor concrete I don't focus on appraisals well today from the witness stand in

between attacks on the judge in New York and the New York Attorney General

Titia James, his own word suggested the opposite, that he was involved.

These are appraisals you'll remember contained in financial statements that the judge

has already ruled were fraudulent.

I would look at them, the former president said on the stand, I would see them and I would

maybe on occasion have some suggestions, which is what the state of New York is claiming, that the appraisals

were inflated on his

behalf and at his behest.

And testifying about loan agreements with Deutsche Bank, he went beyond even those already

court determined inflated appraisals saying, quote, the net worth of me was far greater than the financial

statements. The former president also admitted involvement in lowering valuations in the case

of his Trump Tower apartment around the same time that Forbes magazine outed him for claiming

it was nearly three times larger than it actually is.

The question, this change and valuation came at your direction?

His answer?

Probably I said I thought it was too high.

He also seemed to have trouble with timelines at one point testifying that a loan for Chicago

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