‘Word Salad On the Stand’: CNN Anchor Reports Trump’s Testimony Left the Prosecution ‘Visibly Surprised’

CNN hosted a panel discussion on Monday to discuss former President Donald Trump’s testimony on the witness stand during his civil fraud trial in New York, which did not appear to be going well for the GOP frontrunner.

Anchor John Berman began by reporting Trump is “saying, if anything, they were too low at this point. He’s saying that under oath on the witness stand when he’s already been found liable for fraud, for overvaluing them.”

CNN legal analyst Elie Honig responded, “It is a very risky tack to take here. He’s not even saying the values we submitted were accurate. He’s saying they were vastly understated, which is taking a very big swing.”

“I also think the AG’s office is setting up a little bit of a trap, perhaps for Donald Trump or a tension between two different defenses that we’re hearing. Do you know or do you not know? Because on the one hand, he’s saying, well, we’re going to bring in the big bankers. They’re the ones who do everything. On the other hand, he’s saying, but I know what it’s all worth. It’s worth a billion dollars, Mar-a-Lago, for example. So those two defenses are sort of in tension with one another,” Honig added.

Anchor Kate Bolduan jumped in, saying, “I’m just looking more to this point, kind of what he said his take on his in his description of his involvement in these financial statements. And it seems somewhat from the quotes coming out like a word salad on the stand. I’ll read just some of them for you, Karen.”

“’I thought the apartment was high. We changed it,’ he said earlier. He said he thought that the values were off on his financial statements at times both high and low. Ultimately, he said, Mar-a-Lago was underestimated, as we’ve discussed, as we heard him say outside of court. And then he goes on, ‘I thought 40 Wall Street was very underestimated for its tremendous value,’” Bolduan noted.

“The attorney, one of the state, Kevin Wallace, one of the attorneys, appeared visibly surprised when Trump said he perceived both high and low-valued assets on financial statements, pausing to review a transcript before asking Trump to evaluate, to elaborate,” Bolduan added.

Legal analyst Karen Friedman Agnifilo replied, “So really what he’s doing is he’s saying, I was familiar. I looked at the documents. I thought some were high, some were low. That’s very different than what Don Jr and Eric said, right?”
“They were basically saying, well, that was somebody else. I’m not really sure. Right. What Trump is saying. No, no, I knew I thought this was too high. I thought this was too low. He’s admitting here that he was intimately involved in the evaluation. I think that is as significant as whatever his answer is of what the numbers are,” Friedman Agnifilo concluded.

Watch the full clip above via CNN.

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