Trump civil fraud case: Judge fines Trump $354M, says frauds 'shock the conscience'

Day 20 of the trial is scheduled to begin with testimony from K. Don Cornwell, who worked at investment bank Morgan Stanley in 2014 when Donald Trump bid for the Buffalo Bills football team.

He is scheduled to be followed on the witness stand by former Trump Organization executive David Orowitz.

The state's expert witness, Michiel McCarty, is then scheduled to testify later today about the financial implications of Trump's inflated assets -- context that is expected to guide the judge's determination about the size of fine Trump faces, if any.

Members of the Trump family are scheduled to begin testifying tomorrow, starting with Donald Trump Jr.

Lawyers for the New York attorney general, in a late-day court filing, said they support the court-ordered pause on canceling Trump's business certificates -- but warn that a stay of Trump's civil fraud trial would cause a "cascade of delays."

The filing comes more than three weeks after an appeals court, at Trump's request, paused the enforcement of the cancelation of Trump's business certificates that Judge Arthur Engoron had ordered in his summary judgment.

In today's filing, New York Attorney General Letitia James wrote she was "willing to agree to stay enforcement … pending the end of trial and entry of final judgment."

On the other parts of Trump's appeal -- including the request to delay the trial and arguments against Engoron's summary judgment ruling that Trump committed fraud -- James vehemently argued in favor of letting the trial run its course.

"Abruptly halting trial would thus sow chaos and result in an inordinate waste of both public resources and the time and resources of witnesses," James wrote, alleging that Trump is playing courts against one another to create delays.

"Moreover, any delay here would threaten a cascade of delays not only in this case but also in other pending criminal and civil cases against defendant Donald J. Trump," the filing said.

Trump's legal team has until Nov. 9 to submit their reply.

Former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg provided misleading information about Donald Trump's assets, according to Claudia Mouradian, an insurance underwriter who met with Weisselberg on multiple occasions.

During meetings with Mouradian in 2018 and 2020, Weisselberg claimed that Trump had strong cash assets and stable properties that had been appraised by third parties -- information that Mouradian said she used to determine that the Trump Organization was in "very good financial shape."

"It was a positive factor when he told me that. He was essentially saying the properties don't fluctuate in value during economic cycles," Mouradian testified about Trump's assets during a video deposition played in court today.

However, Weisselberg acknowledged in his own deposition that the Trump Organization did not use outside appraisers to value properties -- contradicting what he told Mouradian.

"I am understanding you correctly that you did not engage appraisers to perform valuations of properties for purposes of that statement of financial condition?" a state attorney asked Weisselberg in a taped deposition.

"Correct," Weisselberg replied, though he said he did not recall that he told Mouradian the opposite.

"It is not consistent with what he told me at the meeting," Mouradian said when shown Weisselberg's testimony.

Court was subsequently adjourned for the day.

An insurance company executive testified that the Trump Organization kept its financial documents closely guarded to an unusual extent.

Claudia Mouradian, a senior underwriting officer at Zurich North America, provided the testimony via a deposition video. Mouradian, who lives outside New York and is nine months pregnant, is the only witness who has been excused from in-person testimony.

Mouradian, who began working on the Trump Organization account for Zurich in 2017, said that the Trump Organization placed restrictions on taking financial materials out of their offices.

"It is rare," she said about the restrictions.

When she reviewed Donald Trump's financial statements in 2018, she recalled a one-hour meeting in Trump Tower overseen by then-Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg.

"He took me to the boardroom. He provided me the financial statements. [He said,] 'take as many notes as you would like, no cellphones, no photocopies,'" Mouradian said. "Allen stayed in the room with me."