Donald Trump’s spent nearly $1 million paying witnesses

Former President Donald Trump has spent a minimum of nearly $1 million on expert witnesses who testified in his New York civil fraud trial.

Trump, alongside his two eldest sons and the Trump Organization, is being sued by New York Attorney General Letitia James for $250 million over claims he fraudulently inflated the value of his assets to obtain business loans with favorable terms.

While New York State Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron has already found the former president liable for one count of fraud, the trial continued in Manhattan on Friday to decide additional counts and the extent of any possible penalties.

Eli Bartov, an accounting professor at New York University, testified as a paid expert witness in Trump’s defense at the trial on Thursday and Friday, arguing that there was “no evidence whatsoever for any accounting fraud” by the former president, while also admitting that the value of Trump’s New York penthouse had been artificially inflated on a financial statement.

During a deposition on July 28, Bartov said that he had already been paid $400,000 to assist the ex-president months before he testified. In court on Friday, Bartov revealed that he had worked a total of 650 hours for Trump at a rate of $1,350 per hour—earning a total of $877,500, potentially not including his testimony on the day.

While expert witnesses are often paid significant sums to testify, state attorneys have attempted to discredit Bartov, suggesting that the large sum shows that he has a clear financial motive to twist his testimony in Trump’s favor.

Bartov’s remarks on Thursday were called “pure speculation from someone they hired to say whatever it is they want” by the attorney general’s counsel Kevin Wallace.

Newsweek reached out for comment to Trump’s office via email on Friday.

In addition to Bartov, government contracts expert Steven Collins previously told the court that he was charging Trump $925 per hour and had worked between “40 and 60 hours” at the time of his testimony, according to The Messenger.

Based on those figures, Collins would have charged Trump between $37,000 and $55,500 for his assistance, apparently not counting any hours that he may be billed for the courtroom testimony itself.

Jason Flemmons, an accountant who works for the same consultancy firm as Collins, reportedly said that he was also being paid $925 per hour by Trump’s defense while claiming that he was unable to even estimate how many hours he had worked at the time of his testimony.

David Miller, an insurance underwriting expert for Trump’s defense, said that he had worked between 45 and 50 hours at a rate of $350 per hour before his deposition took place, meaning that he had charged a minimum of $15,750 before even testifying.

Several other expert witnesses have also testified for Trump during the trial, although some have been unpaid. Combined, the publicly available figures indicate that Trump has racked up a paid witness bill of between $930,250 to $950,500, although the actual total is almost certainly more.

Expert witnesses are commonly paid for their testimony, both for the defense and the prosecution. Banking expert Michiel McCarty, the state’s only paid witness, received approximately $350,000 to testify, according to ABC News.

Trump, who is facing 91 felony counts in four separate criminal cases in addition to his civil proceedings, denies all wrongdoing and claims to be the victim of political “persecution” and “election interference” while campaigning as the leading Republican candidate in the 2024 presidential election.