New York v. Trump on Day Seven: A Deep Dive With Former President’s Longtime Deutsche Bank Primary Lender

Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial plunged headlong into the loans central to the whole case with daylong testimony from the man who headed risk management at the former president’s primary lender before and during his White House tenure. 

Deutsche Bank’s now-retired risk manager Nicholas Haigh examined a stack of credit reports that he signed off on to finance Trump’s real estate ventures from 2011 through 2018, starting with an initial loan of up to $125 million. 

Haigh said he trusted that Trump’s presentations of his assets and liabilities were “broadly accurate.”

A judge already determined before trial that the numbers were fraudulent, and the testimony opened a window into Trump's relationship with what New York Attorney General Letitia James calls the "largest single lender" to him and his namesake company.

What we learned about Trump’s relationship with Deutsche

The better part of Haigh’s testimony Wednesday morning focused on Trump’s initial loan in 2011, secured by the collateral of the Doral Golf Resort and Spa in South Florida, an iconic course known for its past association with the PGA Tour. 

Securing a loan of that size based on a golf course would have been difficult because commercial real estate like it would have been difficult to sell in the event of foreclosure, and so the terms of the loans mandated that Trump guarantee it with his own wealth, the witness said. 

Bank records showed that Haigh recommended its approval based “primarily” on "Financial Strength of the Guarantor."

Trump reported his net worth on his statement of financial condition at $4.3 billion in 2011, a number that both the attorney general and the trial judge have found fraudulent. 

Deutsche ultimately knocked down that calculation to a more conservative $2.4 billion, which the AG alleges was still far higher than his actual net worth of $1.6 billion. The terms of the loan required Trump to agree to covenants including one forcing him to maintain a “minimum net worth of $2.5 billion."

Here’s how Trump’s legal team responded on cross-examination

Trump and his legal team have consistently denied that any fraud took place by arguing that sophisticated parties negotiated the deals; each side performed their own due diligence; and everyone made money.

The former president’s attorney Jesus Suarez hammered those themes in his questioning of the witness. 

"You would agree with me that banks make money by lending money, correct?" Suarez said, in his opening salvo. 

Haigh agreed that was “one way.”

Suarez also called attention to the gulf between Trump’s self-reported valuations of his properties and net worth and Deutsche’s far more conservative adjustments. In one instance, evidence showed that the bank reduced a valuation by 75 percent in order to arrive at their number, but the witness appeared to push back against the notion that their adjustment showed Deutsche was fully informed.

“We, the bank, hadn’t performed all the due diligence one would do in the sense of opinion of value that you would see in an appraisal,” said Haigh, whose testimony resumes on Thursday.

Bracing for Allen Weisselberg’s return? 

The Trump Organization’s former chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg had been in the middle of direct examination when the trial adjourned on Tuesday. But instead of returning to him on Wednesday, the state called the Deutsche witness to accommodate his schedule.

Weisselberg, who served a months-long sentence for tax fraud, may return to the witness stand on Thursday afternoon. 

The ex-CFO had spent all day Tuesday testifying and answered more than 60 questions with variations of “I don’t recall,” "I just don't recall," or "I don't remember." He responded to more than 30 inquiries with "I don't know."

The AG's counsel Louis Solomon pressed Weisselberg on his denials and professed memory lapses, showing the ex-CFO press inquiries that he received from Forbes reporters and editors. 

Trump apparently noticed, labeling Forbes’ senior editor Dan Alexander a “psycho” and the prestigious financial publication a “Rag.” Alexander publicly dared the former president to “point out a single false fact” from their reporting. Evidence showed Forbes staffers sending detailed and lengthy fact-checking emails to Weisselberg and other Trump Organization executives year after year. 

The paper dropped Trump from its billionaires list this year.