Donald Trump Jr. on Monday appeared on Newsmax, where he railed against the New York civil fraud trial his family is currently embroiled in, claiming erroneously that prosecutors wanted to put his father in jail or give him the death penalty.
New York Attorney General Letitia James has sued former President Donald Trump and his family, including sons Donald Jr. and Eric, for $250 million, accusing them of frequently inflating Trump’s own net worth and the value of his assets by billions of dollars from 2011 to 2021 to secure better deals and loans.
Trump and his family have dismissed the accusations and maintained their innocence, accusing prosecutors of being politically motivated and attempting to harm Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.
New York City Judge Arthur Engoron issued in a partial summary last month that Trump, his adult sons, their businesses, and executives committed fraud. Moving forward, the court will rule on six other accusations, including falsifying business records, insurance fraud, and conspiracy claims.
Engoron himself will rule on the charges, as Trump’s legal team did not opt for a jury trial. The result could see Trump lose some of his famous properties and be barred from doing business in New York.
Douglas P. DeFelice/Getty Images
During his appearance on Newsmax, the younger Trump touched on the ongoing trial with host Eric Bolling, accusing the court and prosecutors of bias against his family. This line of outrage was seemingly spurred on by an accusation that Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer and one-time “fixer,” had committed perjury.
“We’ve seen the bias, we’ve seen, you know, Michael Cohen lie under oath, literally get caught, literally perjured himself in front of— you know, admitted perjury beyond what he already went to prison for,” Trump Jr. said.
“It shows you what happens when you’re in a kangaroo court, Eric. It doesn’t matter what the rules are, it doesn’t matter what the Constitution says, it doesn’t matter what general practices and business would be. It doesn’t matter. They have a narrative, they have an end goal, and they’ll do whatever it takes to get there.”
Later, he continued claiming that the legal system is ignoring accusations against President Joe Biden and his family in favor of continuing to prosecute his father.
“You know, those are all reasonable questions and yet no one asks them,” he said. “Our mainstream media, the people in D.C., unwilling to ask it, but they want to throw Trump in jail for a thousand years and/or the death penalty. Truly sick stuff, but this is why we fight.”
Despite Trump Jr’s assertion, a civil trial cannot result in sentences such as prison time or capital punishment.
The younger Trump’s references to Cohen’s perjury does not pertain to anything he said during his testimony against the Trump family in the civil fraud trial last week. During cross-examination, Trump attorney Alina Habba pressed Cohen about his history of lying on the former president’s behalf, at which point he admitted to committing perjury during a personal tax evasion case in 2018.
Habba attempted to use the admission to dismiss the credibility of Cohen’s testimony, while attorneys for the office of the attorney general objected, accusing the Trump team of misunderstanding the meaning of perjury and trying to intimidate the witness.
Newsweek reached out to the New York State Unified Court System via email for comment.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.