What happened in the courtroom during closing arguments in Trump’s civil fraud trial

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• Amna Nawaz:

  One of former President Trump's trials came to an end in New York City today. A judge will now determine whether the former president committed fraud by inflating the value of his real estate assets. Mr. Trump and his attorneys argue the case is politically motivated and prosecutors have no evidence of wrongdoing.

  William Brangham was in the courtroom today, and he joins us now from New York.

  So, William, this is a trial that began last October, fair to say a fairly contentious one. There have been fines and gag orders, even a bomb threat against the judge, I understand. But, today, today was about closing arguments from each side. Mr. Trump, as I understand, ended up doing his own version of closing arguments. What happened?

• William Brangham:

  Yes, the former president had been barred by the judge from making a closing argument, but he managed to do so anyway.

  His lawyer basically opened the door, and the former president just barged right through it and said, as you were just describing, that he's completely innocent, that these charges are trumped-up, that they are bogus, that this is a political witch-hunt against him.

  He also said that it was — that this was an attorney general who's simply trying to stop him from advancing politically. And the thing that was so striking about this is that we think of courtrooms, no matter how adversarial they get, that there's a deference and a respect for the judge.

  And here was the former president directly attacking the judge to his face, saying that he had an agenda of his own, that he couldn't listen to anything for longer than a minute. And, remember, this is the judge, not a jury, who will decide the president's fate in this case, just an incredibly striking moment to see today.

• Amna Nawaz:

  That is incredible to see.

  Remind us, William, about the central allegations in this case and why it's been so fraught.

• William Brangham:

  Right.

  The case has been brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, and she argues that the former president and his associates at the Trump Organization engaged in a decades-long pattern of inflating the assets of various real estate properties and programs that they were running here in the city, and that they were doing so, so that banks would look at those assets, see those inflated values, and give them bigger loans and better rates than they would have.

  The attorney general and her team have argued that these — quote, unquote — "ill-gotten gains" netted the Trump Organization about $250 million, and that he needs to be punished for that.

• Amna Nawaz:

  And what about from Mr. Trump's own attorneys? What have they argued in response?

• William Brangham:

  They have argued and spent several hours today trying to rebut the examples.

  The attorney general had given multiple examples. Like, for instance, it was a Trump Park Avenue, they valued a dozen apartments there as if they weren't rent-stabilized, and that they then inflated the value by tens of millions of dollars, that there was a Trump Tower triplex apartment that they valued — said was 30,000 square feet, when it was only 11,000 square feet.

  The Trump team said that those — some of those things were basically mistakes, that they had no meaningful impact. They were arguing that, remember, Donald Trump was a famously wealthy person. Banks were tripping over themselves to loan money to him, so that the idea that he would need to make inflated statements to get better loans, they argued, just doesn't make sense on its face.

  They say, as — he was referred to by banks as a whale of a client. They argued the same thing that the former president did, that this was a political campaign by the attorney general masquerading as a legal case.

• Amna Nawaz:

  So, William, what happens next? When should we expect a ruling?

• William Brangham:

  So the judge has to rule on this case, and he has said he will do so by the end of this month.

  The important thing to remember is, he has already ruled on count one of this case. He has said that Trump and his sons and some of their associates are liable for fraud. He now has to decide on the penalties for that. Not only is the attorney general asking that Trump and his sons and their associates be banned from doing real estate business in New York, but she's also trying to levy a $370 million fine, both of which would be colossal blows for the Trump Organization.

• Amna Nawaz:

  All right, that is William Brangham reporting for us live tonight from New York.

• William:

  thank you. Good to see you.