Expert witnesses for Trump's defense billed almost $900,000 each for testifying on his behalf at fraud trial

[BumRushDaShow]

Last edited Sat Dec 9, 2023, 12:44 PM - Edit history (1)

Source: CBS News

December 8, 2023 / 10:02 PM EST


New York City — Former President Donald Trump sat attentively in the courtroom of his New York civil fraud trial on Thursday, watching as the defense's final expert witness, Eli Bartov, proclaimed that there was "no evidence whatsoever of any accounting fraud."

On Friday, Bartov revealed that he has made approximately $877,500 for his expert testimony in this case — charging $1,350 per hour for about 650 hours of work. When questioned by lawyers for the state of New York about who was paying him, Bartov replied that his bank statements showed some of the money was paid by the Trump Organization and some came from Trump's Save America PAC.

The discussion of Bartov's compensation came shortly after one of Trump's attorneys, Alina Habba, expressed her frustration to Judge Engoron about objections made by the attorney general's team. "Why are we wasting our time if no one is listening to the words coming out of our experts' mouths?" Habba asked.

Another expert witness for the defense, Frederick Chin, who testified earlier in the week on real estate valuation, admitted that he billed $850 per hour for 1,000 hours of work, totaling $850,000. The state's only expert witness, Michael McCarty, acknowledged that he was paid a rate of $950 per hour, but worked far fewer hours, estimating that he made about $350,000 for his testimony. These rates provide a glimpse into the high costs of just one of Trump's many legal battles, a set of criminal and civil challenges for which the Save America PAC spent $40 million in the first half of this year alone.

Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-expert-witnesses-billed-almost-900000-dollars-each-testifying-fraud-trial-new-york-city/

[jpak]

1. Money talks, Trump walks

Yup

[republianmushroom]

13. Agree

[EarthFirst]

2. "some by Trump Save America..."

I’m willing to bet damn near most of it was paid out by the PAC.

TFG isn’t personally bankrolling any of this…

[Attilatheblond]

14. Yep, most likely because 'experts' probably insist on the $ up front when dealing with Trump

And Trump has likely squirreled away what little money he actually has. That PAC should more accurately be called Maga Idiots Love Funding Crime.

[Delphinus]

19. Is that

something that can be paid from a PAC? I've not really kept up with all that is legal. I've only worked on local campaigns and, to me, that doesn't seem like a legitimate expense - but I've not worked from inside a PAC.

[moniss]

3. Yes and most of the media reporting on the testimony

is too ignorant to understand the word games the witnesses were playing. The biggest check casher was the professor who said he saw no accounting fraud. It is that word "accounting" and how it is used and intended that needs examination. Long ago the outside accounting firm testified that they put together the financial reports based on info given them from inside the company. The accounting firm role was to put the numbers in the right categories and add them up. The accounting firm does not go and investigate each and every piece of information. It is understood that the responsibility is on the part of the company to be truthful.

So the witness says no "accounting" fraud hoping that either now or in future appeals an extrapolation will be made by people to "there was no fraud in the case because Professor Bank Account said so" when in fact all he is saying is that the accountants didn't commit fraud. He did not say the company committed no fraud or that individuals committed no fraud. To get an idea of why he had to dance on the head of a pin we need look no further than the guilty pleas of Weaselnuts.

[Attilatheblond]

15. Thinking the judge is smarter than most media just looking for clicks

And Trumps bikini strutting lawyer forgot she forgot to check the box for a jury trial. She seems to be playing to a jury of average people with average understanding of complex financial parlance instead of a bright judge and his oh-so-smart clerk.

[moniss]

16. Yes I don't think it

will sway Engoron but further up the ladder I can see a judge or two trying to use it as cover for saying no crime was committed. Also it will be widely used in the PR battles to claim that the bias was real and the judge didn't treat their testimony fairly etc. which PR proclamations have been underway for a long time now.

[DallasNE]

20. Good Catch

Below I have cut-and-paste an online definition of "accounting fraud" and, if it is accurate, then it depends on whether the expert witness performed the necessary steps to support his expert testimony that proclaims there was no "accounting fraud". Intent is hard to prove and this person may not be qualified to make that judgement but there is likely some wiggle room I do not see so I can't outright make that claim. The cut-and-paste from Investopedia follows.

What Is Accounting Fraud? Definition and Examples
By STEVEN NICKOLAS Updated August 01, 2022
Reviewed by THOMAS BROCK
Fact checked by MARCUS REEVES
Accounting fraud is the intentional manipulation of financial statements to create a false appearance of corporate financial health. Furthermore, it involves an employee, accountant, or the organization itself misleading investors and shareholders. A company can falsify its financial statements by overstating its revenue, not recording expenses, and misstating assets and liabilities.

KEY TAKEAWAYS
Accounting fraud is the illegal alteration of a company's financial statements in order to manipulate a company's apparent health or to hide profits or losses.
Overstating revenue, failing to record expenses, and misstating assets and liabilities are all ways to commit accounting fraud.
The Enron scandal is one of the most famous examples of accounting fraud in history.
Understanding Accounting Fraud
For accounting fraud to take place, a firm must deliberately falsify financial records. Consider a firm that makes an estimate that must be revised later. No accounting fraud has taken place because the errors were not deliberate. Now suppose the CEO of a publicly-traded company knowingly makes false statements about the firm's prospects. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) may well charge that CEO with fraud. However, it is not accounting fraud because no financial records were falsified.

Always be careful when alleging accounting fraud. Fraud requires intent, which can be difficult to prove.
Overstating Revenue
A company can commit accounting fraud if it overstates its revenue. Suppose company ABC is actually operating at a loss and not generating enough revenue. To cover up this situation, the firm might claim to be producing more income on financial statements than it does in reality. On its statements, the company's profits would be inflated. If the company overstates its revenues, it would drive up the firm's share price and create a false image of financial health.

Unrecorded Expenses
Another type of accounting fraud takes place when a company does not record its expenses. The company's net income is overstated, and its costs are understated on the income statement. This type of accounting fraud creates a false impression of how much net income a company is receiving. In reality, it may be losing money.


Misstating Assets and Liabilities
Another form of accounting fraud occurs when a company overstates its assets or understates its liabilities. For example, a company might overstate its current assets and understate its current liabilities. This type of fraud misrepresents a company's short-term liquidity.

Suppose a company has current assets of $1 million, and its current liabilities are $5 million. If the company overstates its current assets and understates its current liabilities, it is misrepresenting its liquidity. The company could state that it has $5 million in current assets and $500,000 in current liabilities. Then, potential investors will believe that the company has enough liquid assets to cover all of its liabilities.

A Real World Example of Accounting Fraud
The Enron scandal is one of the most famous examples of accounting fraud in history. Enron used off-balance-sheet entities to hide the company's debts from investors and creditors. Although using such entities was not illegal in itself, Enron's failure to disclose the necessary details of its dealings constituted accounting fraud. As the true extent of Enron's debts became known to the public, its share price collapsed. By the end of 2001, Enron declared bankruptcy.

The consequences of accounting fraud were severe in the Enron case. Criminal charges were brought against many of the company's top executives, and some of them were sent to prison. The scandal also eventually destroyed accounting giant Arthur Andersen LLP, which handled Enron's books.

[moniss]

21. Yes indeed and

and many people don't realize that there are different ways an accounting firm may be retained to provide services of different levels and involvement with knowledge of the basis for valuations and listing of assets, expenses etc. Mazzars was compiling what they were given and were really more like on the "outside" rather than "inside" the company. A crooked, dishonest company would do this to accomplish giving the veneer of legitimacy to their financial statements, to keep at a distance anybody in the accounting firm who might find out things were crooked and also the crooked company gains the benefit of trying to deflect "blame/responsibility" to the accounting firm if the crap hits the fan.

You can also have an accounting firm that is deeply enmeshed "inside" the company and is basically their in-house financial department. But a crooked company would not do that for the reasons noted above. They would have their own financial guy, like Weaselnuts, doing the day to day and dirty stuff.

There are also firms who retain an accounting firm just to do taxes or for specific projects. People will sometimes mistakenly start throwing the phrase "our/their accountants" around as though the role played was substantially more and an implication of full blown knowledge and control.

[LiberalFighter]

23. Hey! Would this guy been a former employee of Enron or Anderson??

Did any of his classes have anything to do with them?

[moniss]

24. He sure sounded like

a guy who would swear he never knew there was gambling upstairs.

[bucolic_frolic]

4. At one time I had great faith and respect for the law and legal profession

But going to court is a hired gun proposition. The longest cannon often wins. I have read that even minor lawsuits can run $7,000 a month plus expert witnesses. Costs could run $90,000 for a 3 day expert team to testify. That includes travel and hotels.

So DUers, stay out of court!!

[musclecar6]

5. What a riot

Save America Pac !?!?!?! The only one getting saved here is Donald Trump, who is not paying for anything. All that money from the Pac and other grifting places the money comes from, is to pay trump’s bills as he’s out to save himself. The only thing that will get saved in this whole nonsense, is America, if Trump gets convicted and sent to jail

[Kid Berwyn]

6. What Alina's really objecting to...

…is she’s getting paid last.

Link to tweet

/

(Thanks to the great DUer, underpants!)

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=18511434

[LetMyPeopleVote]

7. This is a bought and paid for witness

Mar-a0Lago is a club and there are agreements and deed restriction in place that makes the valuations fraudulent

[CousinIT]

8. Deliberately misleading headline. They were PAID to testify in his defense.

CBSNews uses the word "billed". No. They were offered PAYMENT for their testimony in his defense. That headline is grossly misleading.

[Marthe48]

9. Hoping traitor is found liable

and that on top of the money he had paid to his 'experts', that he has to pay the prosecutions' expenses.

sic semper tyrannis

[Captain Zero]

11. Isn't mixing PAC FUNDS a campaign violation

Looks like he's using campaign money to pay for lawyers at his BUSINESS FRAUD trial.

That's breaking the laws some way. But really that's what his whole life is about, breaking laws.

I still wonder how many ways he mis-used US Treasury funds when he was president.

[moniss]

22. I think you make a good point

and as near as I recall a candidate can use campaign money for legal expenses arising from being a candidate but not for things like fighting a traffic ticket for example. The PAC money may be in a gray area depending on how the PAC is set up with the IRS and it's stated purposes etc. An example would be if a PAC is set up to lobby for animal rights but is then found to have paid out money for the head of the PAC to buy an oil well. The expenditure is improper for several reasons but one of the most important is that the expenditure has no reasonable/relevant link to the legal legitimate purposes for the PAC to exist.

PAC fraudsters get around personal enrichment or irrelevant expenditure issues by hiring a wife or family member or good "friend" to provide "consulting" services or be on staff. They get paid an exorbitant amount and then that money gets laundered to a "private equity firm", usually under the ownership/control of another "friend" etc. and then they buy the oil well. The original crook at the PAC may wait a year or so before stepping down in order to try and not raise suspicion but eventually they end up with a wad of money for themselves when they perhaps get hired as a "consultant" by the private equity firm etc. That's just a crude example of how it can be done and many of these PACs, lobbying firms and private equity firms are all about being a revolving door/musical chairs scenario where people go from one to the other to the other and back again in an endless swirl.

Given all of these issues it is also important to note that lawyers for these PAC organizations spend a great deal of time and effort to find gray areas and expand them so as much questionable activity as possible can go on but be defended as not illegal based on that gray area. If they can't find an existing gray area they will go about creating them. They do this by creating hypothetical scenarios and then asking IRS for a ruling or interpretation. Then they use those to try to "widen the door" even further.

Now as a final note about the Orange Ruski and other crooks in the GQP circle, they will also create multiple PACs and then pass money and "consultants" back and forth and around and round. They'll also engage with PACs from other crooks. So the Orange Ruski may have a dozen or so PAC entities and they may each interact with dozens and dozens more. There is no really effective means to keep track of it all from a legal/enforcement perspective. The crooks know it and have taken advantage of it and it becomes just a massive money laundering fraud using donations from the gullible for some of the PACs and dark money from legal as well as potentially illegal sources. One big money laundering circus. The rules were written and meant to apply to the simple and straightforward scenario of a PAC advocating with honesty and integrity for various issues. What we now largely have is anything but that.

[Wonder Why]

10. If Donnie paid me $900K in cash, I'd testify in his defence.

"Your honor, in his own mind, he has done nothing wrong because he doesn't have a mind. So he should be committed to a nice institution rather than a prison. I would declare, in my expert opinion, that 20 years there will be enough to cure him."

[Yavin4]

12. The last time that I did jury duty a doctor was an expert witness.

She worked for a professional service that would set her up in an temporary doctor's office, examine the patient, and the provide testimony. She made a ton of money doing this more than practising medicine itself.

[Evolve Dammit]

17. Best witnesses money can buy. And pay for it from campaign fund-raising. Roy Cohn is smiling. nt

[LetMyPeopleVote]

18. This so-called expert is being made than many TFG attorneys