The Daily Fuckup

A progressive daily ledger of Trump-world self-owns, legal pain, policy blowback, and bad-faith chaos.

Skip to the news
Story · October 16, 2023

Witness says Weisselberg told him Trump wanted his net worth to go up

By The Daily Fuckup Newsroom · From the October 16, 2023 edition

Net worth pressure Confidence 5/5
Courts DOJ Immigration Media
★★★★☆Fuckup rating 4/5
Serious fuckup Ranked from 1 to 5 stars based on the scale of the screwup and fallout.
Correction: This article referred to pretrial summary-judgment findings as if they were the trial’s final liability ruling before Oct. 16, 2023. The trial was ongoing, and the court had issued a partial summary-judgment order before trial began.

A Trump Organization executive told the court on Oct. 16, 2023, that Allen Weisselberg said Donald Trump wanted his net worth to go up on the company’s financial statements. Patrick Birney’s testimony came during the New York civil fraud trial that was already underway in Manhattan.

The timing matters because the trial was not starting from scratch. In September 2023, Justice Arthur Engoron had already found Trump and several co-defendants liable for fraud on key claims. The October proceedings were focused on the unresolved issues, including remedies and remaining causes of action, with the court still hearing testimony about how the statements were prepared and who influenced them. citeturn0search0turn0search2

Birney’s account fit the attorney general’s broader theory that the Trump Organization did not simply make casual bookkeeping errors. The state has argued that the financial statements were used to present Trump as wealthier than he was and to support better terms from lenders and insurers. In that view, the numbers were not an accident; they were part of a repeated practice tied to the way Trump’s wealth was portrayed year after year. citeturn0search0turn0search2

Trump’s lawyers challenged Birney’s testimony as hearsay, but the statement still added to the record of witnesses describing pressure to push Trump’s net worth higher. The testimony did not resolve the case, and it did not by itself prove the attorney general’s full theory. It did, however, put another company insider on the stand saying the message inside the Trump Organization was to make the numbers climb. citeturn0search2turn0search3

Proof attached

Sources used for this report

These are the source links stored with this report when it was published. Open them directly to inspect the underlying reporting or primary document.

Further reporting

Read other reputable coverage

These links are surfaced automatically only when the audit pipeline finds reputable outside coverage that helps readers compare reporting without rewriting it.

Reader action

Follow the court record

Read the filed complaint, order, or opinion and follow the docket as the case develops. Share the primary documents when explaining what the court has—and has not—decided.

This card only appears on stories where there is a concrete, lawful, worthwhile step a reader can actually take.

Comments

Threaded replies, voting, and reports are live. New users still go through screening on their first approved comments.

Log in to comment

No comments yet. Be the first reasonably on-topic person here.