Trump’s civil fraud trial put his real estate portfolio under a microscope. These properties didn’t check out

After an exhausting and thorough 11 weeks of testimony focused on accounting and real estate, the civil fraud trial of Donald Trump and the Trump Organization took a break over the holidays ahead of the presentation of closing arguments.

Presided over by Justice Arthur Engoron at the New York State Supreme Court, the case centres around what New York Attorney General Letitia James has described as an “astounding” level of fraud and deceptive business practices over more than a decade.

She says that during this time, the former president and his associates “grossly and fraudulently” inflated the value of his properties to obtain tax, loan and insurance incentives.

Ms James’s office brought the case against the former president, his two adult sons and company executives in September 2022, publishing a bombshell 222-page civil suit alleging that Mr Trump inflated his net worth to “deceive banks and the people of the great state of New York”.

She described the multiple “statements of financial condition” prepared by his former accounting firm Mazars for nearly all of Mr Trump’s marquee properties as “exaggerated, grossly inflated, objectively false, and therefore fraudulent, and illegal”.

The lawsuit follows a three-year civil investigation into at least 23 of his properties and assets, with Ms James’s office finding at least 11 of Mr Trump’s annual financial statements included more than 200 false and misleading asset valuations.

So what more did we learn about Mr Trump’s real estate holdings during the trial? There were a lot of numbers as the attorney general’s counsel laid out its case, and a lot of hyperbole from the Trump family as the defence laid out its argument — including Donald Trump Jr taking the court through