Donald Trump on Tuesday said the piece of paper he randomly pulled out of his pocket while testifying at his Manhattan civil fraud trial was a disclaimer clause he claims clears him of the charges.
“This is the Paper that I wanted to submit that the Judge refused to take, because he doesn’t want anybody to know about the Disclaimer Clause at the beginning of each Financial Statement,” Trump, 77, wrote in a Truth Social post a day after his dramatic testimony in Manhattan Supreme Court.
The former president included a photo of the disclaimer clause in his post which says: “Users of this financial statement should recognize that they might reach different conclusions about the financial condition of Donald J. Trump.”
Trump stunned the courtroom Monday when he tried to read a piece of paper he pulled out of his suit jacket while on the stand and asked the judge would “like to have it.”
“I would love to read this, Your Honor, if I could? Am I allowed to do that?” he later asked Justice Arthur Engoron, who shot the request down.
Trump is accused of lying on yearly “statements of financial condition” by claiming he was worth billions more than he actually was to get better loan and insurance term from 2011 through 2021.
Banks considering lending money to Trump were given the allegedly falsified financial filings and often gave him lower interest rates because of his exaggerated wealth, New York Attorney General Letitia James claims in her suit.
But the real estate tycoon has argued that he can’t be held liable for an inaccuracies on the forms because a clause includes a section that essentially says recipients of the financial statement have to do their own accounting.
Engoron told the ex-president on Monday that he’d already shot down this defense argument in a September ruling.
He later added: “read my opinion again — or for the first time, perhaps.”
In the Sept. 26 decision, Engoron said the disclaimers “do not insulate defendants from liability” — and added that they actually even “put the onus for accuracy squarely on defendants’ shoulders.”
The discussion caused an outburst from Trump, who accused the judge and AG of fraud during his questioning.