Trump is on the witness list for $250 million civil fraud trial starting next week

Donald Trump and his sons Don Jr. and Eric will be among the witnesses in next week’s $250 million civil fraud trial against the former president and his companies, new court filings show.

Trump and his two oldest sons — both senior executives at his company, the Trump Organization — were named on witness lists filed Thursday by lawyers for the Trumps and New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office, which alleges the Trumps have been wildly exaggerating their business assets for years.

Also named on the witness lists is Allen Weisselberg, the former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization who pleaded guilty last year to running a 15-year tax fraud scheme at the company. He testified against the company in a criminal trial last year and was sentenced to five months in jail. The company was convicted and fined $1.6 million.

The witness list also named Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and former Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen as among the 28 witnesses the attorney general’s office intends to call.

Ivanka Trump, a former top executive at Trump’s company, was originally a defendant, but a state appeals court found the claims against her were too old and dismissed them.

Judge Arthur Engoron, who will preside over the jury-less bench trial in Manhattan next week, partly sided with the AG’s office in a ruling Tuesday when he found that Trump had committed repeated acts of fraud for years. Trump attorney Christopher Kise has said he plans to appeal the ruling, which he characterized as “outrageous.”

Trump, meanwhile, blasted the judge he’ll be testifying before as a “Trump hating” judge who has violated his civil rights.

The state Appellate Division — the same appeals court that dismissed the claims against Ivanka Trump — had issued a temporary stay of the trial date of Monday after Trump complained that Engoron hadn’t ruled on some of his arguments. Engoron ruled on the issues Tuesday, and the appeals court allowed the case to proceed to trial Monday.

James has said Cohen, a former Trump loyalist, sparked her office’s investigation when he testified before Congress that Trump routinely exaggerated his assets in financial documents. Cohen pleaded guilty to nine federal charges of tax evasion, violating campaign finance laws and lying to banks and to Congress, and he was sentenced to three years in prison.

Trump has filed a $500 million lawsuit against Cohen in Florida alleging he breached his fiduciary duty to Trump by “both revealing Plaintiff’s confidences, and spreading falsehoods about Plaintiff.” Lawyers for Cohen were scheduled to depose Trump in Florida next week, but his attorney Alejandro Brito argued in court Thursday that Trump needs to be in New York because of the AG’s case.