trump testified earlier in the trial he, his adult sons and several trump organization executives are accused of defrauding banks and insurance companies by inflating assets. trump argues all the loans were paid back and no victim in the case. he calls it a political witch hunt brought by new york attorney general james. she wants to ban trump and his family from doing business in new york as well as a large fine. his defamation lawsuit trial is set to start next week. trump separately faces the new york hush money case, georgia election interference case and federal cases involving january 6th and his alleged retention of classified documents. the civil fraud case today is a bench trial which means justice arthur engoron has sole discretion in deciding trump s punishment. keep in mind, engoron ruled before this trial even start
trial in new york city, where he is accused of falsifying financial documents for a decade. the cbs s robert costa is outside the courthouse. reporter: with his businesses in new york at risk, and after a long day in court, former president donald trump arrived at one of his new york properties to speak to reporters. we have the best poll numbers, we have the best everything, despite this, and may be because of this. reporter: with just days before the iowa caucuses, trump says his legal challenges here in new york and elsewhere are now part of the campaign trail. are you planning to show up in court? yeah, i want to go to all of my trials. reporter: thursday saw the closing argument of the extent of fraud in the new york civil case. judge arthur engoron, who has already concluded trump and his two sons have defrauded banks and companies by inflating assets, is now weighing the scope of penalties. an explosive scene unfolded in the courtroom, as trump spoke up and veered outs
benefits, even though he had a job. a $120,000 a year position at an investment firm. why would you apply for unemployment benefit when is ve a making120,000 fee. o m si ll get to car my name on i don t understand where the government is getting their information but i ll present my facts. but prosecutors say that you got over $20,000 in unemployment benefits, sir. how is that acceptable? ma am, like i said, my employment was changed during the time. i don t understand where the government is coming from. i ll have my defense. santos accused of making false if i can tickettous and fraudulent fictitious and false statements to congress in the filings including inflating assets and failing to disclose other income and co concealing unemployment payments and santos declaring innocence. on capitol hill at least a dozen house republicans say it s time
bragg and his office are going after now. as you ve heard there and as wave seen in the tish james complaint, it s not just hush money to stormy daniels. it is a pattern of inflating assets for one purpose and deflating assets of another. and every time those assets are misrepresented for the purpose of obtaining money or or some other benefit, it is a fraud. so it could be we see not just the hush money charge but a whole series of charges about bank frauds to which mr. cohen is a key witness. suzan, i heard you chime in. michael has weighed into these areas a little bit, and i d just love to ask him did the questions today go beyond the hush money payment, and i know when we ve had other conversations they ve been framed very much arn that and we talked about that. can you give us a hint there? i can t, suzan. i appreciate the question. it almost sounds like, you know,
attorney general that is letitia james. that s a civil case, not a criminal case. but that lays out in detail, nicole, exactly what you are talking about, which is these wildly inflated valuations over and over again, including donald trump s own home where he, you know, says it s over 30,000 square feet when it s actually over it s under 11,000 square feet. and the valuation is over $300 million. when he becomes president and people are looking at what he is saying, he slashes that valuations by hundreds of millions of dollars. so there is just this pattern of inflating assets when you are trying to get loans from banks, but deflating all of that when you re trying to figure out how to pay less taxes. so that s sort of repeated scheme a something that apparently not only has mark looked at, but apparently is