Donald Trump's legal team has been making some big moves in the fraud case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
The latest being documents and testimony that took place during the waning days of the trial, which could ultimately undermine the allegations made by James' prosecutorial team.
The guts of the case being presented by Letitia James' legal team rely on valuations of Trump's properties.
The problem was that the properties were grossly undervalued. For instance, Mar-a-Lago's top valuation used by James was under $30 million, but if you go on any realty site and look at properties in the area, homes that are 6,000 sq. ft. are selling for upwards of $60 million, so how can you say a property with more than 60,000 sq. ft. is only valued at $28 million?
Some of the witnesses brought by James' legal team also lack credibility, such as Micheal Cohen, who openly admitted that he had lied in previous testimony.
Then, of course, there is the judge, Judge Engoron, who issued a partial judgment summary against Trump before the trial had ever even started.
Some of the critical documents presented by Trump's legal team will blow a significant hole in the case being presented against Trump.
For instance, one of the banks that Trump is being accused of defrauding openly stated that they reduced Trump's net worth valuation from $4.2 billion to $2.4 billion, but that was more or less just the way things were done.
David Williams, who has worked for 17 years in Deutsche Bank's private wealth management division and was involved with Trump Organization loans, testified:
"It's not unusual or atypical for any client's provide[d] financial statements to be adjusted to this level to this extent.
"I think we expect clients-provided information to be accurate. At the same time, it's not an industry standard that these statements be audited. They're largely reliant on the use of estimates."
Going back to the Mar-a-Lago valuations, the Palm Beach County Assessor's appraisal of "between $18 million and 27.6 million" which was a critical factor in Judge Engoron's partial summary judgment against Trump.
However, Palm Beach Board of Realtors President John O. Pickett III stated that, at minimum, the property is worth $250 million, and that is a very lowball estimate. The industry experts that I have read estimate the property to be worth closer to $500 million, quite possibly double that price.
I have stated from the outset that I believed the two weakest cases against Trump were the Letitia James and the one brought by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg.
Having said that, I had also stated that I believed Trump would more than likely lose these cases initially, especially the James case, due to a biased judge presiding over the case.
We have all seen Engoron's decisions, not to mention his statements about the case not being overturned on appeal or a possible mistrial.
Engoron's mind is made up, and this trial is nothing more than him going through the motions to make an appeal harder for Trump.
We know what his eventual decision will be to find Trump guilty when this case winds up, and that should be about mid-December. Trump will immediately appeal the case, and that process will play out during the primary race.
I firmly believe that Trump will win this case on appeal, but the real concern for Trump at this point is how this will impact him in the primary race and general election, as well as how much campaign funds will burned defending these lawsuits rather than being used for campaign purposes.
