• Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    “My main finding is that there is no evidence whatsoever of any accounting fraud,” said Bartov. Trump’s financial statements, he said, “were not materially misstated.”

    He suggested that anything problematic — like a huge year-to-year leap in the estimated value of the Trump Tower triplex — was simply an error. Bartov testified that financial statements are “only a first step in a long and complex process” of valuing assets and making lending decisions. He said that the estimates on such documents are inherently subjective “opinions of value,” Calling Trump’s financial statements uncommonly detailed and “so transparent,” he said that accompanying notes told readers to evaluate the numbers for themselves, and “even my 9-year-old granddaughter” would understand that.

    A Deutsche Bank executive testified last month that bankers viewed clients’ self-reported net worth as “subjective or subject to estimates” and often “make some adjustments.” Another executive, now retired, testified earlier that he assumed the figures in Trump’s financial statements “were broadly accurate,” but the numbers were subjected to ”sanity checks” and sometimes to sizable “haircuts.” Such changes, Bartov said, showed that the bank appropriately reached its own conclusions about Trump’s wealth. He called James’ allegations of deceit “absurd.”

    There, that is the important part of the article. None of Trump’s bloviation, or court room drama, or article fluff.