NEW YORK (AP) — A defiant Donald Trump sparred with a New York judge and slammed the state attorney general suing him Monday, using the witness stand at his civil fraud trial to defend his riches and lash out at a case that imperils his real estate empire.

The former president’s barbed testimony spurred the judge to admonish: “This is not a political rally.”

Trump’s long-awaited testimony about property valuations and financial statements was punctuated by personal jabs at state Judge Arthur Engoron, whom he said was biased against him, and New York Attorney General Letitia James, whom he derided as a “political hack.” He proudly boasted of his real estate business — “I’m worth billions of dollars more than the financial statements” — and disputed claims that he had deceived banks and insurers.

“This is the opposite of fraud,” he declared. Referring to James, a Democrat whose office brought the lawsuit, he said, “The fraud is her.”

The testy exchanges and frequent rebukes from the judge underscored Trump’s unwillingness to adapt his famously freewheeling rhetorical style to a formal courtroom setting governed by rules of evidence and legal protocol. His presence on the stand was a vivid reminder of the legal troubles he faces as he vies to reclaim the White House in 2024.

It also functioned as a campaign platform for the former president and leading Republican presidential candidate to raise anew to supporters his claims of political persecution at the hands of government lawyers and judges.

“People are sick and tired of what’s happening. I think it is a very sad day for America,” Trump told reporters outside the courtroom after roughly three-and-a-half hours on the stand.

The fraud case doesn’t carry the prospect of prison as Trump’s upcoming criminal cases do. But its allegations of financial impropriety cut to the very heart of the brand he spent decades crafting. Engoron has already ruled that Trump committed fraud by inflating his financial statements, putting the the ex-president’s future control of Trump Tower and his other marquee properties into question.

The non-jury trial addresses other claims in the lawsuit brought by James against Trump, his company and top executives, including his eldest sons. She wants the defendants to fork over what she claims is more than $300 million in ill-gotten gains and to be banned from doing business in New York.

The civil trial is one of numerous legal proceedings facing Trump as he runs for a second term, including federal and state charges accusing him of crimes including illegally hoarding classified documents and scheming to overturn the 2020 presidential election. His legal and political strategies have now become completely intertwined as he hopscotches between campaign events and court hearings, a schedule that will only intensify once his criminal trials begin.

Trump has been particularly engaged in his fraud trial, aggrieved by the suggestion that he’s worth less than he’s claimed.

“I’m worth billions of dollars more than the financial statements,” he said Monday on the stand, telling a state lawyer, “You go around and try and demean me and try and hurt me, probably for political reasons.”

His testimony had gotten off to a contentious start, with the judge turning to Trump’s attorney at one point and saying, “I beseech you to control him if you can. If you can’t, I will.”

The courtroom at 60 Centre St. had already become a familiar destination for Trump, who spent days over the past month voluntarily seated at the defense table, observing the proceedings. He took the stand once before — unexpectedly and briefly — after he was accused of violating a partial gag order. He denied violating the rules, but Engoron disagreed and fined him anyway.

His turn as a witness gave him the biggest opportunity yet to respond to allegations against him.

Summoned by lawyers for the state, Trump repeatedly bristled at the suggestion that he had ever intended to defraud financial institutions. He said that he’d been misquoted or taken too literally in past public comments about his business dealings and his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, and that disclaimers in his financial statements covered any missteps. He returned to a familiar position that no one had been victimized, though state lawyers contend that Trump was able to get lower interest rates and other benefits because of the wealth reflected on his financial statements.

“Not one bank lost money. Not one insurance company lost money,” he declared.

Tensions between Engoron and Trump, already on display in recent weeks, when the judge fined him a total of $15,000 for incendiary outside-of-court comments, were evident early on Monday when the ex-president was repeatedly scolded about the length and content of his answers.

Engoron, who determined in a ruling earlier that Trump committed fraud for years while building the real estate empire that catapulted him to fame, will decide the non-jury case. He cautioned at one point that he was prepared to draw “negative inferences” against the former president if he failed to rein in his answers.

“I do not want to hear everything this witness has to say. He has a lot to say that has nothing to do with the case or the questions,” the judge said.

Despite the testy back-and-forth early in the day, Trump was later able to veer into expansive answers without anyone cutting him off, using the opportunity to rail against James, the judge and the proceedings in general.

“I think that she’s a political hack, and I think she used this case to try and become governor, and she used it successfully to become attorney general. I think it’s a disgrace that this case is going on,” Trump said.

Of Engoron, Trump said, “He ruled against me, and he said I was a fraud before he knew anything about me.”

James, who was in the courtroom, stared straight ahead at Trump as he spoke and was seen chuckling when Trump suggested she didn’t know anything about one of his properties, which is located across the street from her office. Afterward, she told reporters, “He rambled. He hurled insults. But we expected that.”

Monday’s testimony centered on the core of the allegations by the state attorney general: that Trump and his company intentionally inflated property values and deceived banks and insurers in the pursuit of business deals and loans.

Echoing the stance taken by two of his sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric, in their own testimony last week, Trump sought to downplay his direct involvement in preparing and assessing financial statements that the attorney general claims were grossly inflated and fraudulent.

“All I did was authorize and tell people to give whatever is necessary for the accountants to do the statements,” he said. As for the results, “I would look at them, I would see them and maybe on some occasions, I would have some suggestions.”

He also played down the significance of the statements, which went to banks and others to secure financing and deals.

“Banks didn’t find them very relevant, and they had a disclaimer clause — you would call it a worthless statement clause,” he said, insisting that after decades in real estate, “I probably know banks as well as anybody … I know what they look at. They look at the deal, they look at the location.”

He complained that his 2014 financial statements shouldn’t be a subject of the lawsuit at all.

“First of all it’s so long ago, it’s well beyond the statute of limitations,” Trump said before turning on Engoron, saying he allowed state lawyers to pursue claims involving such years-old documents “because he always rules against me.”

Engoron said: “You can attack me in whichever way you want, but please answer the questions.”

___ Tucker reported from Washington.

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NEW YORK (AP) — A woman was arrested Wednesday after she stood up at Donald Trump’s New York civil fraud trial and walked toward the front of the courtroom where the former president was sitting.

The woman, later identified as a court employee, retreated after a court officer told her to return to her seat. A short time later, officers escorted the woman out of the Manhattan courtroom and arrested her. She was charged with contempt of court for disrupting a court proceeding, state court spokesperson Lucian Chalfen said.

“None of the parties were ever in any danger,” Chalfen said.

Chalfen said the woman had been yelling out to Trump that she wanted to help him, though reporters in the courtroom did not hear her raise her voice. She was later heard screaming in the courthouse lobby as officers removed her from the building.

Trump later indicated to reporters he wasn’t aware of what had happened, saying: “Who got arrested? We didn’t know anything about it.”

The woman, whom Chalfen did not name, works in a different state courthouse. She has been placed on administrative leave and barred from entering state court facilities pending an investigation, Chalfen said.

The trial went on, albeit with one other unusual moment — this one after Trump threw up his hands in frustration and grumbled to his lawyers while a witness was testifying against him.

Judge Arthur Engoron warned Trump and others involved in the case to keep their voices down after the 2024 Republican frontrunner conferred animatedly with his lawyers at the defense table during real estate appraiser Doug Larson’s second day of testimony.

State lawyer Kevin Wallace asked Engoron to ask the defense to “stop commenting during the witness’ testimony,” adding that the “exhortations” were audible on the witness’ side of the room. The judge then asked everyone to keep their voices down, “particularly if it’s meant to influence the testimony.”

Trump was in court for a second straight day Wednesday, diverting from Iowa, New Hampshire and other campaign haunts to give close attention to the case threatening to upend his real estate empire and his wealthy businessman image. Trump attended the first three days, but skipped last week. On Tuesday, he left early to give a deposition in an unrelated lawsuit.

In a pretrial decision last month, Engoron ruled that Trump and his company, the Trump Organization, committed years of fraud by exaggerating his asset values and net worth on annual financial statements used to make deals and get better terms on loans and insurance.

As punishment, Engoron ordered that a court-appointed receiver take control of some Trump companies, putting the future oversight of Trump Tower and other marquee properties in question, but an appeals court has blocked that for now.

Trump didn’t talk about the case on his way into court past TV cameras Wednesday, saving his usual vitriol about New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit for a morning break.

Inside the courtroom, which is closed to cameras, Trump grew irritated as Larson testified. Trump’s lawyers were seeking to undercut the state’s claims that his top corporate deputies played games to inflate the values of his properties and pad his bottom line.

In a series of questions, Trump lawyer Lazaro Fields sought to establish that Larson had, at one point, undershot the projected 2015 value of a Trump-owned Wall Street office building by $114 million. Larson said the “values were not wrong — it’s what we knew at the time.”

Trump threw up his hands during the exchange.

On Tuesday, Larson testified that he never consulted with or gave permission for the Trump Organization’s former controller, Jeffrey McConney, to cite him as an outside expert in the valuation spreadsheets he used to create Trump’s financial statements.

Fields on Wednesday accused Larson of lying, pointing to a decade-old email exchange between McConney and the appraiser.

That touched off an angry back-and-forth between the defense and state sides, with Trump lawyer Christopher Kise suggesting that Larson could risk perjuring himself and needed to be advised about his rights against self-incrimination. State lawyer Colleen Faherty called Kise’s comments “witness intimidation.”

After Larson was escorted out of the courtroom, Kise insisted that he was trying to protect the witness’ rights, while state lawyer Kevin Wallace complained that the defense was mounting “a performance” for the media. Ultimately, Engoron allowed Larson to return and answer the question with no legal warning. Larson said he didn’t recall the email.

Asked again whether he understood that McConney had asked for his input in order to carry out valuations, a weary Larson said: “That’s what it appears.”

Trump railed about that exchange during a court break.

“See what’s happened? The government lied. They just lie. They didn’t reveal all of the information that they had,” Trump said. “They didn’t reveal all the evidence that made me totally innocent of anything that they say.”

After Larson, state lawyers called Jack Weisselberg, the son of former longtime Trump Organization finance chief Allen Weisselberg. The son, who arranged financing for Trump while an executive at Ladder Capital, testified that those deals generally started with discussions amongst father-and-son.

Trump’s civil trial involves six claims in James’ lawsuit that weren’t resolved in Engoron’s pretrial ruling, including allegations of conspiracy, insurance fraud and falsifying business records. Engoron will decide the case, not a jury, because state law doesn’t allow one in this type of lawsuit.

Wednesday’s dust-up was just the latest clash between Engoron and Trump.

After Trump maligned a key court staffer on social media on the trial’s second day, the judge, a Democrat, issued a limited gag order barring parties in the case from smearing members of his staff. Last year, Engoron held Trump in contempt and fined him $110,000 for being slow to respond to a subpoena from James’ office.

Trump on Tuesday said outside court that he had grown to like and respect Engoron, but that he believed Democrats were “pushing him around like a pinball.” “It’s a very unfair situation that they put me in,” Trump said.

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NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump obtained hundreds of millions of dollars in loans using financial statements that a court has since deemed fraudulent, a retired bank official testified Wednesday at the former president’s New York civil fraud trial.

Trump’s statements of financial condition were key to his approval for a $125 million loan in 2011 for his Doral, Florida, golf resort and a $107 million loan in 2012 for his Chicago hotel and condo skyscraper, former Deutsche Bank risk management officer Nicholas Haigh testified.

They also helped Trump secure bigger loans and lower interest rates, said Haigh, who headed the risk group for the bank’s private wealth management unit from 2008 to 2018.

A judge last month ruled that Trump and his company, the Trump Organization, committed years of fraud by exaggerating the value of Trump’s assets and net worth on the financial statements he gave to banks, insurers and others to make deals and secure loans.

Trump’s longtime finance chief, Allen Weisselberg, acknowledged in testimony Tuesday that information in the financial statements wasn’t always accurate.

Trump denies any wrongdoing, emphasizing disclaimers on the documents that he says alerted lenders to do their own homework. Trump has claimed that banks he did business with weren’t harmed, made lots of money in his deals and “to this day have no complaints.”

Haigh is testifying in a trial in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ fraud lawsuit against Trump, his company and top executives. It’s the first time a bank official has been in court testifying in the case about the impact Trump’s financial statements had on his ability to obtain loans.

Deutsche Bank’s rules required Trump to act as a guarantor for the Doral and Chicago loans in addition to putting up the Miami-area resort and Wabash Ave skyscraper as collateral, meaning he would’ve been obligated to repay the loans if his properties faltered.

Deutsche Bank’s private wealth management unit, which handled the loans, wouldn’t have approved them without a “strong financial guarantee” from Trump, Haigh said.

Haigh said he reviewed Trump’s financial statements before approving the loans and, at the time, had no reason to doubt their validity.

The documents portrayed Trump as a wealthy businessman, heavily invested in golf courses and other real estate with strong cash flow and little debt, Haigh said. Deutsche Bank representatives also met with Trump Organization executives to go over the information, he said.

“I assumed that the representations of the assets and liabilities were broadly accurate,” Haigh said of Trump’s financial statements.

Trump’s 2011 financial statement listed his net worth as $4.3 billion. Haigh said he used that figure to shape a loan condition requiring that Trump, as guarantor, maintain a minimum net worth of $2.5 billion, excluding any value derived from his celebrity.

“As the ultimate decider, I needed to be comfortable with the terms of the loan, including the covenants that protected the bank,” Haigh said. The $2.5 billion benchmark, he said, was set “to ensure the bank was protected in adverse market conditions.”

Trump, the Republican front-runner in next year’s election, attended the trial’s first three days last week, watching testimony, consulting with lawyers and griping about the case to TV cameras outside the courtroom. He’s expected back in court as a witness later in the trial.

In a pretrial ruling last month, Judge Arthur Engoron found that Trump, Weisselberg and other defendants committed years of fraud by exaggerating the value of Trump’s assets and net worth on his financial statements.

As punishment, Engoron ordered that a court-appointed receiver take control of some Trump companies, putting the future oversight of Trump Tower and other marquee properties in doubt. An appeals court on Friday blocked enforcement of that aspect of Engoron’s ruling, at least for now.

The civil trial concerns allegations of conspiracy, insurance fraud and falsifying business records. James is seeking $250 million in penalties and a ban on Trump doing business in New York.

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SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Fallen entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes has finished her attempt to persuade a jury that she suffered lapses in business judgment but never engaged in fraud while running blood-testing startup Theranos.

Her defense lawyers rested their case Wednesday shortly after she walked off the witness stand.

That gave Holmes the final say among the more than 30 witnesses who testified in a high-profile trial that began three months ago i n the heart of Silicon Valley. It’s the same locale where Holmes became a media sensation before Theranos collapsed in ruins amid evidence that its ballyhooed blood-testing technology was dangerously flawed.

U.S. District Judge Edward Davila recessed the trial for a week to allow time for refining the instructions to the jury in a complicated case what began 3 1/2 years ago with Holmes’ indictment on multiple counts of fraud. If convicted, she could be sentenced 20 years in prison.

Closing arguments are scheduled for Dec. 16-17. Depending on the duration of those arguments, the jury could get the case late in the day of Dec. 17 and continue deliberations during the week of Dec. 20.

The abrupt end of the defense’s case came as somewhat of a surprise. Holmes’ lawyers had indicated that they might call on a psychologist to discuss the allegations of emotional and sexual abuse Holmes, 37, had raised earlier in her testimony against her former lover and business partner, Sunny Balwani, 56. Holmes was just one of the three witnesses to testify for the defense, but she spent more than 25 hours on the stand since she was sworn Nov. 19.

The decision to let Holmes herself have the last word may have been an indication that her lawyers believed she did a compelling job telling her story. Or they may have feared that the psychological experts that prosecutors intended to call — if the defense called theirs — might undermine their case.

Holmes, Theranos’ CEO for 15 years, spent some more time Wednesday blaming Balwani for neglecting to fix the blood-testing problems that he had told her he would address as the company’s chief operating officer and her most trusted adviser.

She also made it clear that Balwani was a volatile man who she tried not to “ignite” whenever he would “blow off steam through texts.” She also emphasized she wasn’t responsible for all the key decisions at Theranos from 2010 until she dumped Balwani in 2016.

That six-year stretch spanned a period when Holmes was the subject of flattering articles portraying her as a tech visionary. But a series of explosive articles published in The Wall Street Journal beginning in late 2015 revealed that Theranos’ blood-tests were producing faulty results that misled doctors and patients. John Carreyrou, the reporter who wrote those pivotal stories, sat in the back of a packed San Jose, California, courtroom throughout Holmes’ testimony.

Before Theranos melted down, Holmes and Balwani raised more than $900 million from a list of billionaire investors that included media mogul Rupert Murdoch and the Walton family behind Walmart. That while assembling a board of directors that included former Cabinet members ranging from the Nixon to Trump administrations.

Jeffrey Coopersmith, Balwani’s attorney, has vehemently denied Holmes’ attempts to blame him for Theranos’ downfall, as well as the allegations of partner abuse. He told Davila that Balwani would exercise his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination if he were called to testify during Holmes’ trial. Balwani is facing similar fraud charges in a trial scheduled to start next month.

But before that drama begins, a jury of 10 men and four women, including two alternates, will finally get their chance to determine if Holmes will be branded as a crook, instead of Silicon Valley sensation who revolutionized health care as she set out to do in 2003 when she dropped out of Stanford University to found Theranos.

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Her testimony, which focused largely on her enthusiasm based on positive early tests of that blood-testing technology, may be her best shot to avoid conviction on charges of criminal fraud. Prosecutors alleged she duped investors and patients into believing she had invented a breakthrough in blood-testing technology.

Monday’s proceedings resumed after a roughly 90-minute delay, with Holmes again at the witness stand wearing a cobalt dress with a black blazer. She spent most of her time describing clinical studies and other records extolling the effectiveness of a small blood-testing device made by Theranos, a startup she founded in 2003 after dropping out of Stanford University at 19.

U.S. District Judge Edward Davila didn’t explain why he met with lawyers from both sides of the case behind closed doors while a masked — and befuddled — audience sat in a packed courtroom.

Holmes’ latest round of testimony came after her lawyers called her to the stand during the final hour of Friday’s proceedings in what has been the most dramatic moment of a high-profile trial that began in early September.

Anticipation of Holmes’ return to the stand Monday drew a large crowd outside of the San Jose, California, courthouse where the trial is occurring, with the first person lining up around 1 a.m. PT. The roughly 35 people who got into the small courtroom Monday included one of Holmes’ biggest foils — former Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou, who wrote a series of explosive articles starting in October 2015 that triggered Theranos’ collapse and the ensuing criminal case.

Responding to friendly questions posed by one of her attorneys gave Holmes a chance to sway the jurors who will determine her fate. If convicted, Holmes, a former billionaire who is now 37, could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.

After being prompted by her attorney to explain some technical terms about blood testing, Holmes looked directly at the jury sitting a few feet to her right and delved into the topic as if she were a teacher addressing her students.

Having shed the mask that she’s worn while sitting stoically through trial, Holmes also occasionally smiled as she discussed the studies. She also tried to make eye contact with the 14 jurors, including two alternates, as they walked out during a morning break and later at the conclusion of the day’s proceedings.

The studies, conducted with several major pharmaceutical companies from 2008 to 2010, showed the third generation of a Theranos device known as the Edison was delivering mostly encouraging results that gave Holmes reason to believe she and the company were on the road to success.

“Results have been excellent,” one report said. Another concluded that the “results have been precise.”

Another exchange between Holmes and her attorney, Kevin Downey, underscored the rote tone of Monday’s testimony. Prompted by Downey, Holmes explained that she defined a success as something that “has successfully achieved the objective of a program.”

The positive reports and Holmes’ testimony seemed primarily aimed at providing insight into Holmes’ state of mind in an attempt to illuminate why she eventually became so effusive about Theranos technology, which she promised would be able to scan for hundreds of potential diseases and other health problems with just a few drops of blood taken with a finger prick.

But by 2015, Theranos’ own lab director concluded the company’s technology was malfunctioning in ways that produced misleading results that could potentially endanger patients. Theranos wound up running the tests on traditional blood-testing machines while continuing to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from billionaires and less sophisticated investors.

Other evidence presented at the trial showed Holmes distributed misleading information in 2013 about a purported partnership with Pfizer and other pharmaceutical companies that helped Theranos raise money.

Having spent only about three hours on the stand so far, Holmes’ testimony is expected to eventually delve into more intriguing territory.

Before the trial started, Holmes’ lawyers filed documents indicating she intends to blame whatever misconduct that occurred at Theranos on her former lover and the company’s former chief operating officer, Sunny Balwani. Those documents assert that Balwani, who faces a separate criminal trial next year, manipulated Holmes through “intimate partner abuse.” Balwani’s lawyer has blasted those allegations as baseless.

Holmes’ testimony will resume Tuesday morning and is expected to continue into next week.

MICHAEL LIEDTKE | AP News

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