Former President Donald Trump’s civil business fraud trial turned Tuesday to one of the topics that has vexed him most — the value of his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.

Testifying for Trump’s defense, a Florida real estate attorney said the property could be sold as a home, notwithstanding decades-old legal documents in which Trump said he intended to forswear its use as anything but a club. Then a Palm Beach luxury real estate broker testified that he’d value the historic estate at over $1 billion as of 2021.

“It’s something breathtaking. It’s something amazing to see,” broker Lawrence Moens said before showing a glimmering video complete with swelling music, aerial shots of the property at sunrise and sunset and a closing image of an American flag.

His testimony was punctuated by wry remarks. He described a photo of a different part of ritzy Palm Beach as showing “some land, some houses,” for instance.

At one point, Moens even briefly answered a personal phone call while on the witness stand: “Dad, I love you, but I’ve got to get off the phone.”

Spanning 17 acres (7 hectares) with waterfront on two sides, the Trump estate and social club is his home, a place where the former president and current Republican 2024 front-runner has conducted high-profile meetings while in and out of office, and the spot where federal special counsel Jack Smith alleges he improperly stashed classified documents, which Trump denies.

Mar-a-Lago also is a key element of the current New York civil case and Trump’s vehement frustration with it.

State Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit claims that the ex-president and his company deceived lenders and others by giving them financial statements that greatly overstated the values of some of his prime assets, including Mar-a-Lago.

Judge Arthur Engoron, in a pretrial ruling declaring that Trump and his company engaged in fraud, found that he exaggerated Mar-a-Lago’s worth by as much as 2,300%, compared to the Palm Beach County tax appraiser’s valuations. They ranged from $18 million to $28 million.

Trump denies any wrongdoing, saying that his financial statements actually undervalued his assets and were accompanied by disclaimers that wipe away liability for any mistakes.

His frequent complaints about the case have often spotlighted the claims about Mar-a-Lago, one of the holdings he called “the Mona Lisas of properties” during pretrial questioning. As recently as last Friday, Trump vented on his Truth Social platform that the judge and James “falsified the value of Mar-a-Lago.”

The Palm Beach County tax assessment that the judge mentioned was based on Mar-a-Lago’s annual net operating income as a club, not on its resale value as a home or on its reconstruction cost. The county uses the operating-income method to value other social clubs, and the outcome carries tax benefits for Trump — a $602,000 property tax bill this year, compared to about $18 million if Mar-a-Lago were assessed at $1 billion.

In a 2002 agreement with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the club and Trump signed over “any and all of their rights to develop the property for any usage other than club usage.”

Yet when pulling information together for Trump’s annual financial statements, his former corporate controller Jeffrey McConney valued Mar-a-Lago club as though the property could be sold as a private home. The statements pegged it as high as $612 million in 2021.

James said that those values ignored the agreement with the National Trust. The attorney general, a Democrat, maintains that Trump should have valued Mar-a-Lago by its operating income, as the county does.

But Trump, in his own testimony last month, said he believes he retains the right to re-designate the property as a home. The National Trust has declined to comment on whether it agrees.

A defense witness, Miami-based real estate attorney John Shubin, testified Tuesday that “there is absolutely no prohibition on the use of Mar-a-Lago as a single-family residence.”

He noted that the property is simultaneously a club and Trump’s residence. Shubin also pointed to a 1993 agreement between Trump and the city that said Mar-a-Lago would revert to private residential use if the club were “abandoned.”

“Anybody who buys it … would just step into the shoes of President Trump,” defense attorney Christopher Kise said.

Some Palm Beach luxury real estate agents have told The Associated Press that the property would sell for $300 million to $600 million, and possibly $1 billion or more if it sparked a bidding war among uber-wealthy contenders.

So said Moens, a longtime Mar-a-Lago club member who has said he once sold another Palm Beach property on Trump’s behalf.

In a pretrial report, Moens pegged Mar-a-Lago’s 2021 value at more than $1 billion, saying it would be an “unparalleled” family compound for a rarefied cadre of the world’s financial elite.

Asked during pretrial questioning whom he meant, Moens said he could “dream up anyone from Elon Musk to Bill Gates” and “kings, emperors, heads of state.”

“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one,” Moens said during cross-examination Tuesday, borrowing a line from John Lennon’s song “Imagine” and hailing Trump as “a dreamer and a great American.”

The trial had been due to continue Wednesday with a second round of testimony from the former president’s son Eric Trump, an executive vice president at his father’s company. But defense lawyers decided they didn’t need to bring back the son, who’s also a defendant in the case.

Instead, testimony will resume Thursday with an expert on accounting.

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FORT PIERCE, Fla. (AP) — The property manager of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate and an aide to the former president are due back in federal court in Florida on Thursday to face charges in the case accusing Trump of illegally hoarding classified documents at his resort after leaving the White House.

Carlos De Oliveira, the property manager, is scheduled to be arraigned in Fort Pierce before a magistrate judge on charges including conspiracy to obstruct justice in the case brought by special counsel Jack Smith. De Oliveira made an initial appearance in court late last month but didn’t enter a plea because he hadn’t yet found a Florida-based attorney to represent him, as is required under court rules.

Walt Nauta, a Trump aide, is expected to enter a plea for a second time in the case — this time on a new indictment with additional charges recently handed down. Nauta pleaded not guilty last month after the case was first brought in June.

The former president was also scheduled to be arraigned Thursday on the new indictment, which includes allegations that Trump schemed with De Oliveira and Nauta to try to delete Mar-a-Lago security footage sought by investigators.

But Trump filed court papers last week saying that he is not guilty of the charges and waived his right to appear at the hearing. The indictment includes new counts of obstruction and willful retention of national defense information.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to criminal charges in three different cases this year as he tries to reclaim the White House in 2024. The Republican has denied any wrongdoing and has characterized all the cases against him as politically motivated.

Trump pleaded not guilty in Washington’s federal court last week in a second case brought by Smith that accuses Trump of conspiring with allies to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

The updated indictment in the documents case centers on surveillance footage at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach. Trump is alleged to have asked for the footage to be deleted after FBI and Justice Department investigators visited in June 2022 to collect classified documents he took with him after leaving the White House.

Video from Mar-a-Lago would ultimately become vital to the government’s case because, prosecutors said, it shows Nauta moving boxes in and out of a storage room — an act alleged to have been done at Trump’s direction and in an effort to hide records not only from investigators but also from Trump’s own lawyers.

Days after the Justice Department sent a subpoena for video footage at Mar-a-Lago to the Trump Organization in June 2022, prosecutors say, De Oliveira asked an information technology staffer how long the server retained footage and told the employee “the boss” wanted it deleted. When the employee said he didn’t believe he was able to do that, De Oliveira insisted the “boss” wanted it done, asking, “What are we going to do?”

Prosecutors allege that De Oliveira later lied in interviews with investigators, falsely claiming that he hadn’t even seen boxes moved into Mar-a-Lago after Trump left the White House.

De Oliveira’s attorney, John Irving, told reporters after the last hearing that he looks forward to seeing what potential evidence the Justice Department has, and declined to comment about whether De Oliveira has been asked to testify against Trump.

The new indictment also charges Trump with illegally holding on to a document he’s alleged to have shown off to visitors in New Jersey.

Trump is charged separately in New York state court with falsifying business records related to hush money payments made during the 2016 election.

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New charges — and a new defendant — added to the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump underscore how the Mar-a-Lago investigation is still very much ongoing, even as the focus has been on an expected indictment in a separate case related to the 2020 election.

In an updated indictment handed down Thursday, prosecutors allege that Trump asked a staffer to delete camera footage at his Florida estate in an effort to obstruct the federal investigation into his possession of classified documents.

The indictment includes new counts of obstruction and willful retention of national defense information. Prosecutors also added a third defendant to the case: Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira, who they say schemed with Trump and his valet, Walt Nauta, to conceal the footage from investigators.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing, and a spokesperson dismissed the new charges as “nothing more than a continued desperate and flailing attempt” by the Biden administration “to harass President Trump and those around him” and to influence the 2024 presidential race.

Here’s the latest on Trump’s new charges and where his other legal cases stand:

‘THE BOSS’ SAID TO DO IT

The new indictment alleges that Trump demanded that security footage at his Mar-a-Lago estate be deleted after investigators visited in June 2022 to collect classified documents he took with him after the left the White House.

The indictment says that in late June 2022, De Oliveira took another employee to a small room known as an “audio closet” and told the other employee the conversation should remain between the two of them. De Oliveira asked the employee how many days the server retained surveillance footage and said “the boss” wanted the server deleted. When the employee said he didn’t believe he was able to do that, De Oliveira insisted the “boss” wanted it done, asking, “What are we going to do?”

The coded language and talk about needing to carry out the boss’ wishes is reminiscent of how others, including former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, have described life inside Trump’s inner circle. Once Trump’s fixer, Cohen has likened Trump to a mob boss, who would bully others into doing his bidding but would speak in “code” and never directly tell them to do something wrong.

Cohen, who served time in prison in another special counsel’s investigation, testified as a key prosecution witness in the unrelated New York hush-money case against Trump.

An attorney for De Oliveira declined to comment Thursday.

CHANGE IN APPROACH

The new charges against Trump include an additional count of willfully retaining national defense information related to a presentation about military activity in another country. Investigators say Trump showed off that document during July 2021 meeting at his Bedminster, New Jersey, resort with the writer and publisher of the memoir of his former chief of staff Mark Meadows. Details about that document and the meeting were included in the original indictment, but none of the charges had related to it until now.

Trump had returned that document to the government on Jan. 17, 2022 — nearly a year after he left office, according to the indictment.

Bringing the charge marks a shift in the prosecution’s approach, with the Justice Department charging him with holding onto a document they say he knew was highly sensitive after he left office, but returned to the government before the FBI opened its criminal investigation in March 2022.

The charges Trump was already facing stemmed from documents prosecutors say Trump was illegally hoarding at Mar-a-Lago after the federal grand jury investigation began.

Prosecutors allege that during the July 2021 meeting at Bedminster, Trump had waved around the classified attack plan to his guests. “This is secret information,” he said, according to a recording cited in the documents, claiming that, “as president I could have declassified it” but hadn’t.

Trump has since denied he had secret documents before him when he spoke.

TRIAL DELAY?

The addition of a third defendant could impact the trial date, which has already been a source of contention in the case.

Trump’s lawyers have claimed that he can’t get a fair trial before the 2024 election, while prosecutors had wanted the case to go to trial in December.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, in a compromise last week, scheduled the trial to begin in May. If it holds that date could mean a trial will not start until deep into the presidential nominating calendar, and probably well after the Republican nominee is clear — though before that person is officially nominated at the Republican National Convention.

But adding De Oliveira to the case may lead to that getting pushed back.

“It will be just about impossible to keep all of the scheduled deadlines with a new defendant coming in,” said David Oscar Markus, a criminal defense attorney in Miami who is not involved in the case.

In a separate court filing Thursday, prosecutors wrote that the new charges “should not disturb” the May trial date, “and the Special Counsel’s Office is taking steps related to discovery and security clearances to ensure that it does not do so.”

But Trump will likely use the new charges — and new evidence prosecutors say they have against him — in a renewed effort to delay the trial.

MORE POTENTIAL CHARGES LOOMING

News of the indictment came just hours after Trump’s attorneys met with members of special counsel Jack Smith’s team ahead of the expected indictment over the former president’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden. Trump said on his Truth Social network that his attorneys “had a productive meeting” and that “no indication of notice was given during the meeting.”

Trump disclosed earlier this month that he had received a letter from the Justice Department advising him that he was a target of the agency’s election-related investigation. Such letters often precede criminal charges.

The status of the secretive grand jury proceedings remained unclear Thursday, despite building speculation that a criminal case could be near. In a sign of heightened expectations, police officers were photographed gathered outside the courthouse.

MORE LEGAL WOES ON THE HORIZON

The federal investigations are far from Trump’s only legal worries.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has said any indictments resulting from her two-year investigation into whether Trump and his allies illegally meddled in the 2020 election in Georgia would likely come next month.

In October, a civil trial is scheduled to begin in New York state court, where New York Attorney General Letitia James has sued Trump and the Trump Organization, alleging they misled banks and tax authorities about the value of assets including golf courses and skyscrapers to get loans and tax benefits.

Trump scheduled to stand trial in March in a New York hush money case. He’s pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, which are linked to a series of checks that were written to his lawyer Michael Cohen to reimburse him for his role in paying off porn actor Stormy Daniels, who alleged a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006.

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Lawyers for former President Donald Trump asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to step into the legal fight over the classified documents seized during an FBI search of his Florida estate, escalating a dispute over the powers of an independent arbiter appointed to inspect the records.

The Trump team asked the justices to overturn a lower court ruling and allow the arbiter, called a special master, to review the roughly 100 documents with classification markings that were taken in the Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago. A three-judge panel from the Atlanta-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit last month limited the special master’s review to the much larger tranche of non-classified documents. The judges, including two Trump appointees, sided with the Justice Department, which had argued there was no legal basis for the special master to conduct his own review of the classified records.

But Trump’s lawyers said in their application to the Supreme Court that it was essential for the special master to have access to the classified records to “determine whether documents bearing classification markings are in fact classified, and regardless of classification, whether those records are personal records or Presidential records.” “Since President Trump had absolute authority over classification decisions during his Presidency, the current status of any disputed document cannot possibly be determined solely by reference to the markings on that document,” the application states.

It says that without the special master review, “the unchallenged views of the current Justice Department would supersede the established authority of the Chief Executive.” An independent review, the Trump team says, ensures a “transparent process that provides much-needed oversight.” The FBI says it seized roughly 11,000 documents, including about 100 with classification markings, during its search. The Trump team asked a judge in Florida, Aileen Cannon, to appoint a special master to do an independent review of the records.

Cannon subsequently assigned a veteran Brooklyn judge, Raymond Dearie, to review the records and segregate those that may be protected by claims of attorney-client privilege and executive privilege. She also barred the FBI from being able to use the classified documents as part of its criminal investigation. The Justice Department appealed, prompting the 11th Circuit to lift Cannon’s hold on investigators’ ability to scrutinize the classified records.

The appeals court also ruled that the department did not have to provide Dearie with access to the classified records. Trump’s lawyers submitted the Supreme Court application to Justice Clarence Thomas, who oversees emergency matters from Florida and several other Southern states. Thomas can act on his own or, as is usually done, refer the emergency appeal to the rest of the court.

Late Tuesday the court said the government was being asked to respond to the petition by Oct. 11. Thomas has previously come under scrutiny for his vote in a different Trump documents case, in which he was the only member of the court to vote against allowing the U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot to obtain Trump records held by the National Archives and Records Administration.

Thomas’ wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, is a conservative activist and staunch Trump supporter who attended the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally on the Ellipse and wrote to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in the weeks following the election encouraging him to work to overturn Biden’s victory and keep Trump in office.

She also contacted lawmakers in Arizona and Wisconsin in the weeks after the election. Thomas was recently interviewed by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection and she stood by the false claim that the 2020 election was fraudulent.

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