- For 2 days, Deutsche Banks' in-house Trump credit reports flashed on screens at his NY fraud trial.
- They showed he never missed a loan payment and earned the bank millions in interest.
- But a banker testified – and the NY attorney general has argued – that this is besides the point.
Leaving aside all the fraud that a judge says the loans were based on, Donald Trump was otherwise a model borrower, according to the latest testimony in his New York civil fraud trial.
For a second day on Thursday, a former Deutsche Bank executive sat on the witness stand as years of his firm's confidential Trump "credit reports" flashed across two big screens.
Trump never missed a loan payment, the credit reports and the banker's testimony showed. In almost a decade as a borrower, Trump was never even late making a payment – not before, during, or after his presidency.
"So far as I can recall, the loans were performing," the banker, Nicholas Haigh, told the judge in the non-jury trial, at which attorney general Letitia James seeks to banish Trump Organization from her state's borders, and to ban Trump and his eldest sons from ever running a New York company again.
"And all the obligations of the borrower were met," Trump attorney Jesus M. Suarez asked the banker in his next question.
"As far as I know, yes," the banker answered.
If Trump's prompt payments were not enough to burnish his borrower bona fides, the former president's collateral also grew, the credit reports showed. It grew by millions each year, as the projects Deutsche Bank funded with $400 million in loans – his tower in Chicago, his golf resort in Miami, his luxury hotel in Washington DC – were developed.
And all the while, the bank made "millions" in interest, the banker testified, to that extent bolstering a frequent Trump defense talking point: that the fraud trial is a political grudge in search of a victim. Trump, who last week attended the first three days of the trial, is expected to return in person next week, The Messenger and the Associated Press reported.
"These loans are a credit to the fact that you and your team made a good credit decision?" Suarez asked the banker.
"I generally agree with that," he answered.
"You did a good job, right?" the Trump lawyer pursued.
The banker paused, then answered, "Yes."
But then there's all that fraud – more than $3.6 billion a year in exaggerated net-worth, James has alleged.
That changes a lot, the banker soon suggested from the stand, during an exchange with James' attorney Louis M. Solomon, who heads her real-estate finance enforcement section.
"Is whether or not a loan gets repaid the same question as whether the bank has accurately weighed the risk of the loan?" James' lawyer asked.
"No," the banker answered.
Asked why that's the case, he answered, "Getting repaid is just one element of what the bank is trying to achieve" when lending money.
The bank also wants to get the best interest rate possible, he explained, using the term "a fair return on our capital."
The attorney general has argued that by exaggerating his worth, Trump won millions in interest breaks, giving Deutsche Bank and other lenders a decidedly unfair return.
As her direct case continues in the coming weeks, James' side will call at least one banking expert who will further allege that Deutsche Bank may never have lent to Trump at all if they knew how large a gap there had been between his self-stated and actual net-worth.
One thing is already certain – once Deutsche Bank learned what the attorney general was unearthing about Trump's math, they decided he was actually less than a model borrower. In 2021, they forced a "managed exit" from the Trump Organization in an ugly, secret breakup.
Testimony continues tomorrow with more testimony from a current Trump executive, Patrick Birney, a vice president of financial operations.
Birney played a central role in preparing Trump's net-worth statements between 2017 and 2021.
The attorney general's side has suggested in court filings that Birney may implicate Trump by saying the former president liked to see his net-worth increase each year, leaving top executives scrambling to meet those targets.