A Deutsche Bank executive may have just tanked New York Attorney General Letitia James' lawsuit against former President Donal Drump – which revolved around portraying the German lender as Trump's biggest victim in an alleged scheme to inflate his assets in order to obtain favorable terms from banks and insurers.
David Williams, who directly worked on at least one of several loans obtained by Trump over several decades, testified on Tuesday in Manhattan that it's "atypical, but not entirely unusual" for a bank to internally slash a client's stated asset values by 50% and approve a loan anyway, as they did with Trump, Bloomberg reports.
"It just depends on the circumstances," said Williams, a managing director at the bank.
The testimony completely undermines AG James' premise, that Trump defrauded the German bank.
Victimless crime?
Trump and two of his sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, testified earlier in the trial that no banks had been victimized by the alleged inflated valuation, and that various lenders had made millions of dollars in interest on the loans. Trump also argued that his name, and the potential for future development, was a factor in the previous valuations.
Blocks your path…
James, an activist Democrat AG, says that Trump and his company falsified documents to banks and insurers. The judge in the case, Arthur Engoron, has similarly proven himself to be a partisan operative and not a neutral arbiter.
Could this be a more transparent show trial?