After spending two days on the witness stand for the second time, Jeffrey McConney had had enough.
He tearfully told a lawyer for his former boss Donald Trump and his co-defendants that he was "giving up" his longtime accounting role at the Trump Organization after a crushing wave of legal threats against it.
"I just wanted to relax and no longer be accused of misrepresenting assets of the company I loved working for," he testified Tuesday in a lower Manhattan courtroom. "I'm sorry."
Mr. McConney is one of more than a dozen defendants charged in a massive fraud case by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who has accused the former president, his two adult sons and key aides of grossly inflating his ability and ability to fraudulently obtain favorable financial terms. terms spanning more than a decade in an effort to boost the family's brand-building properties in its vast real estate empire.
Judge Arthur Engoron already found the defendants liable for fraud. In the eighth week of a trial arising from the blockbuster lawsuit, the former president's lawyers have narrowed their defense: Blame the accountants.
Handwritten notes on Trump's financial statements at the center of the case suggest it was the former president and his CEOs who had the final say. One of Trump's 2014 net worth statements explicitly said "DJT TO GET FINAL REVIEW."
Mr. Trump, whose own meandering testimony repeatedly resulted in insults to the judge and attorney general, even admitted at one point that he sometimes "looked at" those financial condition statements and perhaps made "suggestions" .
The civil trial in the New York State Supreme Court will determine what claims remain in the lawsuit - including insurance fraud, falsifying corporate records and conspiracy charges - and what penalties, if any, Mr. Trump and his co-defendants will face.
Ms. James is seeking at least $250 million to recover ill-gotten gains and effectively stop the Trumps from doing business in the state. The judge's preliminary order ordered a trustee to take over the Trumps' property, but an appeals court has temporarily frozen that decision.
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Defense attorneys are expected to return to court on November 27 and continue their case through December 15.
Mr. McConney, who joined the Trump Organization in 1987 and continued to work for the company until last year, was granted immunity in exchange for his testimony in last year's unrelated but parallel criminal prosecution of the Trump Organization.
The company was fined $1.6 million after a New York jury convicted two of its subsidiaries on 17 charges stemming from what prosecutors described as a years-long scheme to avoid paying payroll taxes by compensating top executives with generous tax-free extras.
In that case, Mr. McConney admitted that he broke the law to help Trump Organization executives in the scheme.
Allen Weisselberg, former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, also pleaded guilty to several tax crimes stemming from the criminal investigation into the former president's business empire. He was sentenced to five months in prison earlier this year.
Mr. McConney was one of the first witnesses to testify in the fraud trial last month, when lawyers from Ms. James' office questioned him and others about Mr. Trump's statements about his financial condition.
These documents allegedly contained incorrect valuations of Trump's assets, which were provided to banks, insurers and other parties to obtain favorable terms for loans and other benefits.
Mr. McConney said he was responsible for those statements from 2011 to 2017, but he distanced himself from the main accounting firm hired to prepare them.
"We as the Trump Organization did not prepare the statement," he said during testimony last month.
However, Mr. McConney admitted that Mr. Trump himself would request a final review of the compilation of the statements of financial condition before they were filed.
The former president later testified that he gave Mr. McConney and Mr. Weisselberg full authority for these statements.
But lawyers have repeatedly turned to the longtime accountant of the company that put them together: Mazars USA.
During lengthy questioning over nearly three days on the witness stand at the start of the trial, that accountant, Donald Bender, testified that the Trump Organization provided him with the data used to compile those financial statements.
When questioned this week, McConney said Bender "had access to everything he wanted" and was "basically an extension of our accounting department" where "anyone... could talk to anyone."
"I relied on him for a lot of things," he said.
Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump testified similarly, denying that they themselves were involved in manipulating or had any knowledge of their father's financial statements.
"He was an outside accountant we relied heavily on for all our accounting needs," Donald Jr. said.
When it comes to the accountants, "I listen to their expertise," he said.
"Every decision I made was based on the information I received from Mazars," he said. "They were deeply involved in every aspect... For accounting purposes I rely on accountants"
Eric Trump said during his testimony that he knew "virtually nothing."
"This is just not something I've ever had to deal with," he said.
When shown an email he had received from Mr McConney in 2013 about "your father's financial statements", Eric Trump continued to deny his involvement.
"It's just not something I got involved in," he added. "I knew nothing, or almost nothing, about the [statements of financial condition]. I never worked on it. ...I was responsible for building properties and pouring concrete. This was just not in my domain."
Ivanka Trump also denied having anything to do with these statements.
"You showed me some documents, emails and correspondence that broadly referenced financial statements, but I was not involved in any of that," she told attorneys for the attorney general.
When their father was asked whether these statements were in accordance with accounting guidelines, he said his accountants "had to do something with them."
"They were paid a lot of money to do this work," Trump testified. "I told two top people to work with the accounting firm to get them everything they needed."
When it came to identifying fraud, "everyone" was responsible, he said.
Returning to Judge Engoron's courtroom this week for another round of testimony, Mr. McConney was presented with a 2014 deposition about Mr. Trump's financial condition - which reportedly contained $3.5 billion in exaggerations.
"Donald Trump would get the final rating?" Andrew Amer, a state attorney, asked him.
"I understand that, yes," Mr McConney replied.
Trump received final review of all other statements until he entered the White House in January 2017, McConney said.
McConney defended the statements in emotional remarks from the witness stand Tuesday, saying he never intended to mislead anyone.
"I think everything was justified. Numbers do not fully reflect what these assets are worth," he said.
"It's just really frustrating to get hit over the head every time with a negative comment about something," he said, "and I gave up."
