Former U.S. President Donald Trump and his two eldest sons are set to face a three-month civil trial on charges of fraud from October to December. New York state courts accuse Trump of "inflating" his assets by billions of dollars between 2011 and 2021.
A New York judge has ruled that this non-jury trial will commence on the second of October in Manhattan. In an order announced on Friday, it was indicated that proceedings will continue until the 22nd of December, shortly before the first Republican primary elections on January 15th in Iowa. Donald Trump, who dreams of returning to the White House, is considered the frontrunner in these elections.
Preliminary hearings are scheduled to take place at the end of September.
Prior to this civil trial, the New York Attorney General, Letitia James, submitted hundreds of pages of accusatory documents against Donald Trump and his two eldest sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, to the local Supreme Court on Friday.
This action supports a lawsuit filed by the judge in September 2022, seeking compensation of $250 million from Trump, his sons, and the Trump family for damages related to tax and financial fraud.
The Attorney General accuses the Republican politician and his sons of "deliberate manipulation" in the valuation of the conglomerate consisting of golf clubs, luxury hotels, and other properties, in order to secure better loan terms from banks or to reduce taxes on them.
According to judicial documents revealed by James on August 30th, it is suspected that Trump "falsely inflated the value of his assets by billions of dollars" each year between 2011 and 2021 - including when he was president from 2017 to 2021. These discrepancies were estimated to be "between 17% to 39%, or between $812 million and $2.2 billion" annually.
In a new "cautious" estimate issued by the Prosecutor's Office on Friday, the exaggeration in Trump's asset valuation ranges "between $1.9 billion and $3.6 billion annually."
Trump has repeatedly condemned the case as a "ridiculous" one led by an "racially biased" American judge.
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