"Incriminating": Trump NY fraud trial defense witness backfires — and cries on the stand

Ex-Trump Organization accountant Jeffrey McConney broke down in tears on the witness stand Tuesday as Donald Trump's civil fraud trial in New York pressed on into its eighth week. While McConney expressed how tired he was of being the former president's scapegoat, his tears fell as he lamented the way law enforcement keeps targeting him as a way to get to Trump. 

“I'm an honest person,” he mumbled through tears as he reminisced about his time at the real estate company, according to The Daily Beast. “I got to do things that a normal accountant wouldn't be able to do… I'm very proud of the work I did in the 35 years.”

He described all the ways prosecutors had pressed him in the last five years, bemoaning how they have subpoenaed him, compelled him to testify at the Manhattan district attorney's tax fraud trial against the Trump Organization last year, and made him appear at the New York Attorney General's current bank fraud trial.

When speaking to a friendly defense lawyer, however, McConney, who is also one of the defendants in the lawsuit, did not say anything damaging or scathing about the company. He, instead, dragged on about documents for hours.

In her $250 million lawsuit, New York Attorney General Letitia James has accused McConney of aiding the Trump family and former chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg in doctoring business paperwork to secure better deals with banks and insurance companies. 

“I just want to relax... and stop being accused of misrepresenting assets with the company that I was working for,” he said. “I think everything was justified… I feel proud of what I did.”

His tearful response came after a question from defense lawyer Jesus Suarez asking why McConney no longer works for the Trump Organization.

McConney was the company's comptroller for years, overseeing its internal finances and approving transactions made by Trump himself. That role also included presiding over the billionaire's questionable business dealings. Court records from previous court cases show that he played a key role in Trump's scheme to direct charitable funds to then-Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, a plot that eventually ended with the New York attorney general shutting the charity down.

The Manhattan district attorney's trial last year revealed how McConney also helped executives evade taxes, with him admitting that he "tried to help them in any way I could… with some suggestions.” The company was convicted of all charges and fined $1.6 million.

In that case, McConney attempted to shoulder all the blame and attribute it to personal "mistakes." A juror later told The Daily Beast that the jury grew tired of him after realizing "he was stonewalling the prosecution and just could not say enough for the defense.”

He employed the same tactic last month when lawyers with the attorney general questioned him about his role in the alleged fraud scheme, which involved nearly a dozen real estate projects over the course of 10 years.

The retiree had an easier time on the witness stand Monday and Tuesday as he fielded questions from the defense. 

But the story of his departure from the Trump Organization failed to include the crucial fact that he was promised a $500,000 severance package when leaving the company. When state investigators questioned him in court early last month, McConney revealed that he had already received $375,000 of the sum and was still owed $125,000. 

"That monetary arrangement raises obvious red flags, given the concern that his former employer may still have considerable influence over a witness in the case," The Daily Beast's Jose Pagliery reported. 

The situation mirrors the agreement McConney's former supervisor, Weisselberg, made ahead of his testimony in the district attorney's criminal trial last year. He revealed when he testified that he was actually still earning the same $640,000 annual salary and receiving the same $500,000 yearly bonus, including a payout that he admitted he was looking forward to receiving shortly after that trial. Former prosecutors who spoke to The Daily Beast at the time decried it as a blatant method of keeping Trump's trusted workers in check.

McConney quickly regained his composure on Tuesday and then took questions from Andrew Amer, special litigation counsel for the attorney general. He also quickly resumed his strategy of claiming ignorance when asked about holes in his testimony. 

On Monday, the former Trump employee said that external-hired accountants at the firm Mazars USA wrote a particular paragraph in Trump's 2015 statement of financial condition that was littered with caveats. The assertion supported the defense's attempt to cast away blame by creating distance between Trump and certain details in his vastly inflated financial statements. 

During cross-examination on Tuesday, however, Amer displayed an image in the courtroom and pointed out that McConney had written the very same paragraph in blue pen on a handwritten note that lauded Trump's "brand value" and how it "afforded Mr. Trump the opportunity to participate in licensing deals around the globe as reflected on the balance sheet herein.”

Upon being questioned about it, McConney claimed he didn't remember who wrote it. 

McConney's testimony went on to prove injurious to himself, Trump, the former president's eldest sons and Weisselberg as he was questioned about the blue-ink notes written on the sides of several net-worth statement drafts presented by prosecutors, Business Insider reports.

Another cautionary note from the 2015 draft showed McConney wrote that "this computation also includes forecasted deals that have not signed yet" and asked whether Trump wanted to exclude $151 million in as-yet-fictional assets from the statement.

The final version of that year's net-worth statement indicates that McConney's suggestion went ignored, possibly by Trump himself. In the civil case, the attorney general alleges that Trump fluffed up his net-worth statements with those sorts of nonexistent assets. 

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During Tuesday's cross, McConney was also handed a draft of Trump's 2014 statement and was asked to look at a note on the draft's first page — "DJT TO GET FINAL REVIEW" — which he said he had written.

The former president has repeatedly denied involvement in preparing the decade's worth of financial statements and, in a pretrial deposition denied knowing who had written the note on the draft. The attorney general had alleged that the 2014 net-worth statement contained $3.5 billion in exaggerations. 

"Donald Trump would get final review?" Amer asked the retired accountant.

"That was my understanding, yes," McConney answered from the stand.

Amer asked next whether Trump would get the final review of every statement until leaving for the Oval Office in 2017, after which Eric Trump would approve the drafts.

"That was my understanding, yes," McConney answered again. When asked if it was his handwriting on the drafts — the blue pen marks — McConney also confirmed that it was. 

McConney's slew of handwritten notes indicate that it was Trump and his top executives who made the final changes and signed off on these net-worth statements. As such, those notes deal a serious blow to the Trump team's primary defense of blaming the external accountants. 

The attorney general's office also seems prepared to argue that these handwritten notes show McConney, Weisselberg and Trump intentionally plotted in doctoring the numbers each year.

While presiding Judge Arthur Engoron has already found before the trial that Trump and the other defendants committed fraud in inflating his wealth on the statements, the trial is to determine whether they further violated six specific state laws: falsifying business records, filing false financial statements, insurance fraud, and conspiracy to commit each of these counts — all of which require proof of intention.

McConney's notes could also come back to bite the Trumps and their company by the end of the trial. 

"The fact that these incriminating, hand-scrawled drafts were turned over to authorities by Mazars but not by the Trump Organization could come up at the end of the trial as evidence that Trump's side failed to retain and turn over documents as required by state subpoenas," Business Insider's Laura Italiano reported.