Cohen says Trump directed staff to inflate his asset values

Former US president Donald Trump “arbitrarily” set a figure for his net worth and senior staff would “reverse engineer” asset valuations to meet those figures, his one-time lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen has told a New York court.

Mr Cohen is a former close associate of Mr Trump and once famously said he would “take a bullet” for him.

However, Mr Cohen broke with the former president about five years ago and later spent time in prison after pleading guilty in relation to tax crimes, campaign violations and lying to the US Congress.

He later spoke out against Mr Trump to federal investigators, at congressional hearings, in a book and on television. He is now a key witness in the $250 million (€236 billion) civil case brought by Democratic New York attorney general Letitia James which alleges financial fraud in the Trump Organization.

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The former president has denied the allegations made by Ms James that Mr Trump and his company misled banks, insurers and others by giving them financial statements that inflated his wealth. He has claimed that the allegations against him, as in the criminal cases he is facing, are politically motivated and aimed at damaging his campaign for the presidency.

Mr Trump, who turned up at court on Tuesday, is the front-runner to secure the Republican Party nomination to run for the White House in the presidential election next year. His arrival to give evidence on Tuesday marked the first time that Mr Cohen was known to have publicly met Mr Trump in five years.

After the court broke for lunch, Mr Trump maintained to reporters that Mr Cohen was not a credible witness, saying: “His record is a horrible one.”

He added: “We’re not worried at all about his testimony.”

During a court break, Mr Cohen described seeing the former president again as a “heck of a reunion”.

Mr Cohen testified that Mr Trump sought his staff to make him appear as wealthy as he wanted.

“I was tasked by Mr Trump to increase the total assets based upon a number that he arbitrarily elected, and my responsibility – along with Allen Weisselberg [the chief financial officer in the Trump Organization] – predominantly was to reverse engineer the various different asset classes, increase those assets in order to achieve the number that Mr Trump had tasked us with.”

Mr Cohen told the court that Mr Trump directed him and Mr Weisselberg to greatly inflate his assets.

He said after showing Mr Trump his financial statements he would look at the total assets and say: “I’m actually not worth $4.5 billion. I am really worth more like $6 billion.

“He would ask Allen and I to go back to the office and return with the desired goal,” Mr Cohen said.

Mr Cohen said the value of the company’s holdings was “whatever number Mr Trump told us”.

Judge Arthur Engoron has already ruled that Mr Trump and his company committed fraud, but the trial involves remaining claims of conspiracy, insurance fraud and falsifying business records.

Mr Trump says his assets were undervalued, and he maintains that disclaimers on his financial statements essentially told recipients to check the numbers for themselves. – Additional reporting: AP