Trump judge slams credibility of paid expert in fraud case, suggests fee influenced testimony

The judge presiding over the high-stakes civil business fraud trial of former President Donald Trump harshly questioned the credibility of a key expert defense witness, suggesting his testimony was influenced by his nearly $900,000 fee.

The expert, New York University Accounting Professor Eli Bartov, told CNBC he was “shocked” by the judge’s remarks and denied that his payment played a role in his assessment.

Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron slammed Bartov in a Monday evening ruling denying the defendants’ latest request for a directed verdict in the $250 million case.

“Bartov is a tenured professor, but all that his testimony proves is that for a million or so dollars, some experts will say whatever you want them to say,” Engoron wrote in the three-page ruling.

It is common for experts to be paid by the party asking for their involvement in a lawsuit, but opposing parties — or in this case, a judge — can use that compensation to question the expert’s credibility.

“The most glaring flaw” in the defendants’ bid to scrap the case for lack of evidence, Engoron wrote, is their assumption that their experts’ testimony “is true and accurate, or at least that the Court, as the trier of fact, will accept it as true and accurate.”

The judge wrote that Bartov’s “overarching point” was that the financial statements at the heart of the case “were accurate in every respect.”

But Engoron noted that he had already found that those financial records “contained numerous obvious errors” before the trial even began. “By doggedly attempting to justify every misstatement, Professor Bartov lost all credibility,” Engoron wrote.

Bartov said that Engoron’s description of his testimony was a “complete mischaracterization.”

He said his testimony acknowledged that the financial…