Trump is testifying today in the fraud case - here's what he has to say.

Former President Donald Trump will appear Monday at the trial of a civil lawsuit accusing him of fraud in inflating the value of his company's assets for personal gain. According to Trump's preliminary deposition before the trial, the former president will deflect blame for overstating the value of assets on financial statements and argue that it's not that big of a deal at all.

In the April 2023 deposit, Trump downplayed the importance of such reports, claiming that he wanted them prepared "more for myself to see a list of assets" and that the numbers in them are "rough estimates" because "at the end of the day, I can't tell you how much a property is going to be worth, and nobody can''say'.

Trump argued that, if anything, the valuations of his properties in the reports are lower than the real value - contrary to what the attorney general claims - because property values rose in the years following the filing of the financial reports, and he claimed he didn't include the full "branded value" in his report, which he said should have added "billions of dollars" (although records showed the branded value was already reflected in the valuations).

He "did not consider" the financial reports "important" because they contain a "useless article" that he said tells financial institutions not to trust the report completely and to independently verify the numbers, claiming, "I never thought these reports would be given much importance,'''because when you open it up and immediately on the first page you read a page and a half of text, you see, go do your own accounting, do this, do that. "

The financial reports did not actually invalidate the report, as Trump claimed, but only noted that developing estimated values requires "significant judgment" and the use of different methodologies or market assumptions, which "could have a material impact on the estimated present value. "

Trump also said he had little involvement in the preparation of the reports, saying he would certainly look at the final report, but "I didn't deal with it much," although he also said he remembered discussing the final report with then-Trump Organization CFO Allen''Weisselberg and Comptroller Jeffrey McConney and noted that he believed the valuations of some properties were overstated.

The former president blamed Mazars USA accountants for all the problems with the financial reports, saying his "internal controls" to ensure the reports were accurate were that he "hired Mazars and paid them a lot of money to keep track of what was going on" and claiming that if any financial information the Trump Organization sent to the accounting firm was insufficient, "then Mazars would have asked for more information".

Trump will begin his testimony when the trial resumes Monday at 10 a.m. ET.

His testimony will be followed by his daughter Ivanka Trump, who will give'' The 'useless article' Judge Engoron noted that the article 'does not say what the defendants say, it is not a prohibitory document, and it cannot be used to justify fraud.'" Regarding Trump's claim that the appraisals were below possible value due to a lack of "brand value," prosecutors pointed during Trump's deposition to an appraisal he conducted of his company's brand value, which is "already reflected in the market value of the [Trump Organization] property." They also pointed out that Deutsche Bank, one of the financial institutions that relied on the financial statements, required him to exclude the brand value in the report.

There are still plenty of questions Trump may be asked on the stand that are not reflected in his''s deposits, including more direct questions about whether he overstated the value of the assets or directed those actions to increase his stated intrinsic value. Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen directly accused Trump in his testimony at the trial, claiming that the former president directed Cohen and Weisselberg to inflate the value of assets in order to achieve a desired figure for his self worth. Cohen, formerly known as Trump's "right-hand man" before he became an opponent of the former president, testified that Trump never directly told him to change the numbers, and that he "talks like a mob boss" and "says what he wants without saying it directly. "

2.6 billion dollars.