Photo: Joe McNally/Getty Images
Twenty years ago, when Donald Trump introduced himself to the American public from a limousine driving through New York City, he told a simple story of triumph disguised as a confession.
"About 13 years ago I was in serious trouble. I was billions of dollars in debt," he said in the opening scene of his reality TV show The Apprentice, which premiered in January 2004. "But I fought back and I won - Major League."
Related: Trump is 'toast' in New York fraud trial, says former Watergate prosecutor
The show gave Americans a chance to see Trump as he saw himself: a successful real estate mogul with towering skyscrapers, sprawling golf courses and the enthusiasm needed to make good deals. A man who found redemption through hard work, an epitome of the American dream topped off with a strawberry blonde quiff.
Twenty years later, Trump's real estate empire faces danger. For eleven weeks, the inner workings of his company were discussed during a fraud case in New York. A judge has already decided that Trump committed fraud. He will decide on the sentence later this year.
Trump's companies could lose their licenses in New York, making it virtually impossible for him to run his real estate business. He also faces a huge fine - state attorneys argued Friday for a $370 million fine - that could force the company to sell its properties.
At this point, prosecutors and Trump's defense team have rested their case. Closing arguments will take place on Thursday.
The past three months provided an opportunity for Trump and his lawyers to defend Trump in court against allegations that he deliberately overstated his assets on government documents. Instead, they have worked to uphold the brilliant portrait Trump has painted of himself over the past four decades. The story that brought Trump fame and ultimately the White House could lead to his company's demise.
Déjà vu in the courtroom
A devastating pre-trial summary judgment made the trial an uphill battle for Trump's team. The ruling, issued on September 26, less than a week before the trial began, said documents submitted by prosecutors showed Trump had committed fraud. The ruling is currently under review by an appeals court, but if upheld, Trump will lose his business licenses, severely limiting his real estate activities in New York.
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The ruling was to dramatically limit what the trial should include. Instead, Trump and his team relied on many of the arguments that Judge Arthur Engoron had already rejected in his ruling.
If figures on government documents were incorrect, Trump's lawyers argued, it was the fault of Mazars USA, the Trump Organization's former accounting firm.
"Every decision I made was based on all the information I would have gotten from Mazars," Donald Trump Jr., a defendant in the case, said during his testimony.
When asked whether it was the Trump Organization or Mazars' duty to ensure the documents were accurate, Trump emphasized that the company was "paid a lot of money to do this work."
But in his pre-trial ruling, Engoron noted that Mazars had disclaimers on the statements stating that Trump was responsible for "fair representation" in the financial statement.
"The Mazars disclaimers place the responsibility for accuracy squarely on the shoulders of the defendants," Engoron wrote.
Inside and outside the courtroom, Trump also tried to argue the value of the "worthless clause," a disclaimer on the financial documents that he says signals to lenders that the estimates on the financial documents are "worthless."
Once again, Engoron had considered the worthless clause argument moot in its preliminary ruling.
"The 'worthless clause' does not say what Defendants say, does not rise to the level of an enforceable disclaimer, and cannot be used to isolate fraud," Engoron wrote.
Will Thomas, a business law professor at the University of Michigan, said Trump's team appeared to be making arguments largely about "whether the court got its summary judgment error wrong."
"It's not that they're totally irrelevant, but I don't suspect that any of those things really made any meaningful difference" for Trump, he said.
What also didn't help Trump is the apparent evasion he and other Trump Organization executives, including his two adult sons, displayed on the stand when confronted with documents showing they were aware their valuations were inflated goods.
Thomas noted that Engoron will have a lot of leeway in interpreting dodges in the stands. If Trump appeals, the appeals court can "review statutory statutes and judicial opinions - they can assess whether the appeals court properly followed the law," he said.
"But they're not in the courtroom. They cannot judge all those intangibles that come with live testimonies. So the standards of review make it very difficult to overturn factual findings, especially when it comes to something like 'Which witnesses do I give credence to?'," Thomas said.
'A fantasy world'
One of the more critical points Engoron made in his pre-trial ruling outlined what he called Trump's "fantasy world," which he said relied on "bogus arguments."
"In the world of defendants: rent-regulated apartments are worth the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unlimited land; limitations can disappear into thin air... and square footage [is] subjective," he wrote. "That's a fantasy world, not the real world."
Here Engoron has essentially taken away the argument that property valuation is an 'art', free from laws and restrictions.
But Trump and his team continued to push the idea that Trump had the right to determine the value of his properties. On the stand, he emphasized that Mar-a-Lago was worth at least $1 billion, although Palm Beach valued the property between $18 million and $27 million.
Trump and his family were dismissive of the role legal restrictions played in the valuations. For example, the Mar-a-Lago deed states that Trump will not turn the club into a private home. Trump said turning his office building at 40 Wall Street into apartments was an "absolutely perfect use for that building," even though Trump had given up the rights to turn it into a condominium in the building's leasehold agreement.
Trump and his lawyers argued that the former president could simply look at a building and determine its value. "All you have to do is look at a picture of the building and say, 'That building,'" Trump said in early November while sitting on the witness stand, about the Trump office building at 40 Wall Street. just look at it and you say, 'That's worth a lot more than $550 million.'"
Michael D'Antonio, a Trump biographer and author of The Truth About Trump, said Trump's success in business has always been a central element of his identity, even though he knows it is based on exaggerations.
"A salesperson has to love his product to sell it, and he is committed to that principle," D'Antonio said. "He assumed that finance and business were rigged games, so he assumes politics is a rigged game. This belief justified doing anything."
Trump has always surrounded himself with people who will uphold the ideals he sets for himself. Throughout this trial, Trump's lawyers were always ready to shower the president with compliments as they defended him and reassured him of his wealth and power.
Christopher Kise, Trump's lead attorney, said in his opening argument that Trump "has made billions of dollars building one of the most successful real estate empires in the world." Alina Habba, another Trump attorney, echoed Trump's claim that Mar-a-Lago was worth at least $1 billion.
"I assure you there is someone out there who would want to buy that property, that spectacular property, for well over a billion dollars," she said in her opening statement. "That's not fraud, that's real estate."
Who makes the final judgement?
Rather than seeking vindication in court, Trump and his defense team often seemed more interested in appealing to a different audience: the millions of viewers who watched The Apprentice and saw a wealthy businessman fly over Manhattan in a helicopter with his name on it. Those who believe his story.
Throughout the trial, Trump seemed uninterested in convincing Engoron of his innocence and employed a strategy of provocation, criticizing Engoron and New York Attorney General Letitia James on social media, calling the trial a "witch hunt" and denounced the judge. even when you're in the stands.
"How do you judge someone and call him a fraud, like the president of the United States, who has done a great job," an angry Trump said during his testimony. 'It's terrible what you did. You knew nothing about me."
It's the bravado that helped Trump gain millions of viewers for his reality TV show, back when he was most associated with the phrase "you're fired."
Trump appears to be betting that tightening his narrative will help rile up his supporters before the 2024 election, even if it won't win him any legal points. Ultimately, how voters judge him may be more important to Trump. His strategy is working: Trump is leading in Republican polls in a field of former allies and followers.
But the courts are watching Trump closely. In addition to the possible decimation of his real estate business, Trump faces the possibility of prison time with future criminal cases set to go to trial. If his fraud trial in New York so far has been any indication, the story that made him famous can only save him so much.