its closing arguments in donald trump s civil fraud trial after a dramatic scene in which the former president himself addressed the court. the judge had only allowed trump to speak on the condition that he focus on the facts but the president quickly veered into other territory claiming he is an innocent man being persecuted d the judge telling defense counsel please control your client. th former president has already been found liable for inflating properties to get loan deals. the judge will attempt to issue his ruling by the end of the month. yasmin vossoughian is reporting for us outside the courtroom in new york. vaughn hillyard is urbandale, iowa, also with us, renato, former federal prosecutor. somebody might argue at least in terms of drama donald trump s a tough act to follow. reporter: yeah, i think that person would likely win that argument. nonetheless, i think lee tee james has a lot in store. she is not likely to offer closing arguments to other attorneys.
this. but this week we saw one of history s great split screen moments. on tuesday, at the exact same time that former president trump was being arraigned in florida not only were fake electors from trump s plot to overturn the 2020 election, not only were those fake electors testifying before special counsel jack smith s january six grand jury, but at the same moment congressional republicans were holding their own bizarro hearing about january 6th. at the exact same time a former president was arraigned on federal criminal charges related to unlawfully hoarding documents, witnesses were testifying in jack smith s other sprawling federal investigation into that same former president all the while that former president s congressional defenders were hard at work whitewashing the january 6th insurrection. all at the same time. that sort of wild convergence belongs in the history books. and while the arraignment and investigation of a former president is clearly of utmost impor
fraud, that he lied about the value of his properties, that he lied to the authorities, that he lied in financial statements, that he did it for over a decade, and that he furnished, and this matters for the law, false information to banks, insurance companies, as well as state authorities and then he would try to get favorable loans and cheat on his taxes. pattern of fraud and deception that was used by mr. trump and the trump organization for their own financial benefit is astounding. claiming you have money that you do not have does not amount to the art of the deal. it s the art of the steal. and there can not be different rules for different people in this country or in this state. and former presidents are no different. no one is above the law. that is the statement. that is the attorney general who has proven so aggressive in so many cases, without fear of favor. she s pursued people in both parties, and while the nature of her work means that some of this is va
or not the proceeds from some of these sales have to go towards that. there has been a monitor put in place sort of to keep the status quo with these companies, with these properties so that, you know, during the trial they can t run off, run away with everything and hide assets, so everything is being, you know, stayed right now. he is looking, because all of his business certificates are cancelled and he has ordered that he can t do business in new york, yeah, that absolutely could be the death nail for the company. so, david, talk about the company itself. what do we know about it? what do we know about a possible judgment this high, $370 million, what it could mean overall? well, that s a huge amount of money, even for a purported billionaire like donald trump. as the graphic showed a minute ago, he does have a lot of hard real estate assets in very valuable parts of the country,
your general opinion of consent decrees. they say they plan to place they police department under a consent decree. for people they don t understand what they are, let s start with how they are and how effective they are. sure, so in 1994 the much maligned crime bill, the 94 crime bill that biden for better or for worse gets tons of credit for, gives the position at the federal government can go in and investigate and use its power to essentially regulate out of control law enforcement with an investigation and a consent degree. the consent decree is the parties get together, they say this is what we re gonna do is to solve all these problems that just came to light, and there s a monitor put in place to show that the department is in compliance. it gets from the department from the terrible place there into a better place. it clearly has not fixed the departments that have been under consent decree. it is clearly, though, better than nothing. there are things that happen under conse