Attorney General Letitia James is seeking at least $250 million in fines, a permanent ban against Trump and his sons Donald Jr and Eric from running businesses in New York and a five-year commercial real estate ban against Trump and the Trump Organization.

Testimony in the Manhattan courtroom began following opening statements, with Donald Bender, a partner at Mazars USA and longtime accountant for Trump’s businesses, as the state’s first witness.

Trump told reporters before the trial began that the case was a “scam,” a “sham” and a political vendetta by James, and during a lunch break called the Democrat “a corrupt person, a terrible person. Driving people out of New York.”

He was equally unsparing of the judge, Arthur Engoron, calling him a partisan Democrat who is using the case to interfere with the 2024 presidential election, where Trump holds a big lead for the Republican nomination.

“This is a judge that should be disbarred,” Trump told reporters. “This is a judge that should be out of office.”

Trump’s election campaign used the start of the trial for fundraising, saying he was defending his family and reputation from New York Democrats it called “corrupt tyrants.”

The case concerns accusations by the attorney general that Trump inflated his assets and his own net worth from 2011 to 2021 to obtain favorable bank loans and lower insurance premiums.

James has accused Trump of materially overvaluing assets including his Trump Tower penthouse apartment in Manhattan, his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and various office towers and golf clubs, and inflated his own fortune by as much as $2.2 billion.

“This isn’t business as usual, and this isn’t how sophisticated parties deal with each other,” Kevin Wallace, a lawyer from James’ office, said in his opening statement. “These are not victimless crimes.”

Christopher Kise, a lawyer for Trump, countered in his opening statement that Trump’s financials were entirely legal.

“He has made a fortune literally being right about real estate investments,” Kise said. “There was no intent to defraud, there was no illegality, there was no default, there was no breach, there was no reliance from the banks, there were no unjust profits, and there were no victims.”

Alina Habba, another lawyer, separately told Engoron that Trump’s assets were “Mona Lisa properties” that could fetch premium prices if Trump sold them.

Trump wore a dark blue suit, a brighter blue tie and an American flag pin on his lapel in court.

As he entered, he called the case “a continuation of the single greatest witch hunt of all time.”

James said her office was ready to prove its case.

“The law is both powerful and fragile,” she said. “No matter how much money you think you may have, no one is above the law.”

Engoron is hearing evidence without a jury.

Last week, the judge found Trump, his adult sons and 10 of his companies liable for fraud, describing in scathing terms how the defendants made up valuations.

He said these included valuing the Trump Tower apartment as if it were three times its actual size and worth $327 million, and estimating that Mar-a-Lago was worth up to $739 million though its assessed value was no more than $28 million.

The judge canceled business certificates for companies controlling pillars of Trump’s empire, and said he would appoint receivers to oversee their dissolution.

Trump responded at the time by calling Engoron “deranged.”

The trial will review six additional claims including falsifying business records, insurance fraud and conspiracy, and address how much in penalties the defendants should pay.

Before opening arguments, Engoron described himself as a generalist on the law. “One thing I know a lot about is the definition of fraud,” he said.

Wallace played an excerpt from a deposition where Michael Cohen, who had been Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer but has since turned against his former boss, said the goal was “to attain the number that Mr. Trump wanted.”

Kise countered that just because people disagree about valuations does not mean one valuation must be fraudulent.

“They are not designed to be absolutes,” he said.

In his testimony, Bender said he relied on information provided by Trump and his companies when compiling Trump’s personal financial statements.

“The original numbers come from the Trump Organization, and any changes that would have been made at the end would have been approved by the Trump Organization,” Bender said.

Trump frequently spoke with Habba while Bender was on the stand. Bender is expected to resume his testimony on Tuesday.

The trial is scheduled to run through early December.

More than 150 people including Cohen could testify, though much of the trial may be a battle of experts opining on financial documents.

Trump also faces several other legal headaches, which have been a financial drain, and made him the first sitting or former US president to be criminally charged.

He has been criminally charged in Washington over his efforts to undo his loss in the 2020 presidential election, in Georgia over moves to reverse election results there, in Florida over his handling of classified documents upon leaving office, and in New York over hush money payments to a porn star.

Trump has denied all wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty.

“The Republican National Committee should immediately cancel the upcoming debate in Miami and end all future debates in order to refocus its manpower and money on preventing Democrats’ efforts to steal the 2024 election,” Trump campaign senior advisors Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita said in a statement, without offering any basis that Democrats were acting improperly in the 2024 election, The Hill reported.

“Anything less, along with other reasons not to cancel, are an admission to the grassroots that their concerns about voter integrity are not taken seriously and national Republicans are more concerned about helping Joe Biden than ensuring a safe and secure election,” they added.

The statement from Wiles and LaCivita comes as LaCivita had already confirmed to NBC News that Trump would not be attending the third GOP debate and had previously urged the RNC to cancel any future GOP presidential debates.

The RNC is holding its third debate in Miami on November 8.

“The RNC should immediately put an end to any further primary debates so we can train our fire on Crooked Joe Biden and quit wasting time and money that could be going to evicting Biden from the White House,” LaCivita said in a statement following the second debate.

Trump has skipped the first two GOP debates, releasing an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson as counter-programming for the first GOP debate in Milwaukee while speaking to supporters in the Detroit area around the time of the second one.

The former president has cited his commanding lead in GOP primary polling as justification for why he’s decided to forgo the debates, frustrating some of his opponents who called him out during the second debate for not sharing the stage with the rest of them.

Trump’s attorneys, in a court filing earlier this month, had argued that US District Judge Tanya Chutkan should step aside because of past statements she has made that allegedly demonstrated bias, AFP reported.

Chutkan, in a 20-page opinion, flatly denied the motion.

“The court has never taken the position the defense ascribes to it: that former ‘President Trump should be prosecuted and imprisoned,‘” Chutkan said.

“And the defense does not cite any instance of the court ever uttering those words or anything similar.”

Chutkan noted that the legal standard for a judge to recuse himself or herself from a case is if their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”

“The record ‘as a whole’ does not support a reasonable question as to the court’s impartiality,“ she said.

Trump’s lawyers had sought Chutkan’s recusal based on statements she made at the sentencing of participants in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters.

“Although Judge Chutkan may genuinely intend to give President Trump a fair trial — and may believe that she can do so — her public statements unavoidably taint these proceedings, regardless of outcome,“ they said.

But Chutkan said she had “specifically withheld judgment on whether other people should be charged for conduct related to January 6” and had not ever recommended that other individuals be investigated or charged.

“Recusal is not warranted in this case,“ she said.

Chutkan has set March 4, 2024 for the start of Trump’s trial on charges of conspiring to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has pleaded not guilty.

The 61-year-old Chutkan, who was appointed by former Democratic president Barack Obama, has handed down some of the stiffest sentences to participants in the Capitol attack.

Trump is also facing racketeering charges in Georgia for allegedly conspiring to upend the election results in the southern state and a trial in Florida in May 2024 on charges of mishandling top secret government documents.

The scathing decision by Justice Arthur Engoron of New York state court in Manhattan will make it easier for state Attorney General Letitia James to establish damages at a scheduled Oct. 2 trial, Reuters reported.

Engoron also ordered the cancellation of certificates that let some of Trump’s businesses, including the Trump Organization, operate in New York, and ordered the appointment of a receiver to manage the businesses’ dissolution.

The judge described how Trump, his adult sons Donald Jr. and Eric, the Trump Organization and other defendants made up valuations and inflated Trump’s net worth to suit their business needs.

“That is a fantasy world, not the real world,” Engoron wrote.

The judge also sanctioned the defendants’ lawyers for making “preposterous” legal arguments and fueling their clients’ “obstreperous” conduct.

Trump and the other defendants have argued that they never committed fraud, and that the challenged transactions were profitable. They plan to appeal Engoron’s decision.

“Today’s outrageous decision is completely disconnected from the facts and governing law,” Christopher Kise, a lawyer for Trump, said in a statement. “President Trump and his family will seek all available appellate remedies to rectify this miscarriage of justice.”

James said she looks forward to presenting the rest of her case at trial.

“It’s a devastating ruling,” said Bill Black, distinguished scholar in residence for financial regulation at the University of Minnesota Law School. He said cancelling business certificates could hurt Trump’s ability to make money.

“If the decision is upheld, they have to liquidate the LLCs which actually hold the enormous bulk of the assets,” Black said, referring to limited liability companies.

Trump is seeking the Republican presidential nomination for 2024 and has maintained a commanding lead in the race despite the criminal charges he faces in multiple cases.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump called accusations that he committed fraud “ridiculous and untrue,” and blasted Engoron as a “DERANGED” judge doing the bidding of James, a Democrat.

“This is Democrat Political Lawfare, and a Witch Hunt at a level never seen before,” Trump wrote. “If they can do this to me, they can do this to YOU!”

Trump has repeatedly asserted without evidence that indictments he faces are “witch hunts.”

James sued Trump in September 2022, accusing him, three of his adult children and the Trump Organization of lying for a decade about asset values and his net worth to defraud banks and insurers into providing better terms.

Engoron said James submitted “conclusive evidence” that Trump had overstated his net worth by between $812 million and $2.2 billion.

“Even in the world of high finance, this court cannot endorse a proposition that finds a misstatement of at least $812 million dollars to be ‘immaterial,'” he wrote.

The judge said Trump’s overvaluations included his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, his penthouse apartment in Manhattan’s Trump Tower, and various office buildings and golf courses.

He took particular issue with Trump’s claim that the penthouse was 30,000 square feet (2,787 square meters), nearly three times its actual size, resulting in an overvaluation of as much as $207 million.

“A discrepancy of this order of magnitude, by a real estate developer sizing up his own living space of decades, can only be considered fraud,” Engoron wrote.

The judge said Trump also grossly overvalued Mar-a-Lago, estimating it was worth as much as $612.1 million, though an assessor said its market value was no more than $27.6 million.

Engoron also chided Trump for offering defenses in a deposition that were “wholly without basis,” including that there was nothing wrong with how he valued properties in a given year if their values subsequently went up.

“He also seems to imply that the numbers cannot be inflated because he could find a ‘buyer from Saudi Arabia’ to pay any price he suggests,” the judge wrote.

Engoron’s ruling comes three months after a state appeals court said that some of James’ claims were too old because statutes of limitations had expired in either July 2014 or February 2016.

Engoron rejected Trump’s argument that the decision essentially gutted James’ lawsuit, which James has said reflected a series of “continuing wrongs” that she could prove at trial.

The appeals court dismissed one defendant, Trump’s daughter Ivanka, from the case.

Trump also faces a slew of other litigation.

He has pleaded not guilty to charges in four indictments accusing him of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat by Democrat Joe Biden, hoarding classified materials, and covering up hush money payments to a porn star.

Trump also faces a January civil trial over damages he owes for defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll, who claimed he raped her. He has denied wrongdoing.

Engoron’s decision does not automatically mean James’ fraud case will go to trial next Monday.

Trump has sued to delay the trial, accusing Engoron and James of ignoring the appeals court order to narrow the case.

He and the other defendants have said this made it impossible to prepare for trial because they did not know which claims they would have to defend against.

The appeals court is expected to rule on the request for a delay this week.

US Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment William LaPlante said on Tuesday that the United States was set to create joint production of certain types of military equipment on the territory of Ukraine. He gave no further details of the US plans.

When asked by TASS to comment on the types of military equipment and the timeframe of the project, the Pentagon spokesperson said: “The Department of Defense continues to work with our Ukrainian partners closely to ensure they have what they need to defend their nation, both for their immediate battlefield needs and to build Ukraine’s military capacity for the long-term.

Although we have no additional announcements to make at this time, the US is committed to building a strong Ukrainian defense industrial base, and we are working to enable industrial partnerships in the coming months.”

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said in a video address on September 22 that his country was “preparing to create a new defense ecosystem together with the United States to produce weapons.” The project will create a new industrial base and new jobs, Zelensky added.

Biden told a meeting on Historically Black Colleges and Universities that failure by Congress to fund the federal government would have dire consequences for the Black community, including by reducing nutritional benefits, inspections of hazardous waste sites and enforcement of fair housing laws, Reuters reported.

He said he and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy had agreed a few months ago on spending levels for the government.

“We made a deal, we shook hands,” he said. “Now a small group of extreme House Republicans. don’t want to live up to that deal, and everyone in America could be faced with paying the price for it.”

Asked if he had spoken with McCarthy, Biden said, “I haven’t.” He shook his head when asked when they would speak.

US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told reporters earlier that the “vast majority” of the 7 million participants in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program would see an immediate reduction in benefits in the days and weeks after a shutdown starts.

Nearly half of US newborns rely on WIC, the USDA says.

A separate benefits program, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), will continue as normal for the month of October but could be affected afterward, he said.

More than 40 million Americans relied on SNAP to make ends meet in 2022; inflation has put new pressure on household budgets, with prices higher since the COVID-19 pandemic for goods from bread to fresh vegetables and baby formula.

During a shutdown, farm service agencies will also stop making loans to farmers during harvest time, and new homebuyers will not be able to get loans in rural areas, Vilsack said. More than 50,000 Department of Agriculture workers will be furloughed, meaning they will not receive a paycheck.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives may move to advance steep spending cuts this week that would almost certainly be rejected by the Democratic-controlled Senate. While the cuts would not become law, a failure by both chambers to agree could force a partial shutdown of the US government by next Sunday.

House lawmakers on Tuesday were set to take up four spending bills for the coming fiscal year that would also impose new restrictions on abortion access, undo an $11 billion Biden administration climate initiative, and resume construction of the Mexico-US border wall, a signature initiative of former president Donald Trump. Biden has vowed to veto at least two of the bills.

Vilsack called Republican fiscal plans “punitive” and “petty.”

“We urge Washington to refrain from the extremely dangerous words and actions that lead to an artificial increase of anti-Russian sentiments in Armenia. By doing this, they confirm that the goal of the US and its allies is not the normalization of the situation and peaceful development in Trans-Caucasia, but to inflict strategic damage on Russia and to deliberately destabilize the Eurasian territory with a perspective to push us out of this region,” the diplomat pointed out, commenting on remarks, made by representatives of the US Administration, who claimed that Russia is allegedly not a reliable security partner for Armenia, TASS reported.

“Such insinuations of local officials are outrageous. The Americans effectively sing along the unconstructive public claims of Armenian politicians, who seek to shift responsibility for their own failures in domestic and foreign policy,” Antonov underscored.

“The Russian Federation has been and remains a reliable ally of Armenia. It has always sought to provide necessary aid to this brotherly nation, including by sending our peacekeepers to Nagorno-Karabakh. The fact that Russian peacekeepers died on duty only reaffirms Russia’s readiness to make difficult decisions in order to achieve peace between Azerbaijani and Armenian people,” the envoy said.

Earlier on Monday, US Department of State Spokesman Matthew Miller claimed that Russia has proven itself an unreliable partner in the situation regarding Nagorno-Karabakh.

The former US president’s lawyers sharply opposed the request from Special Counsel Jack Smith for a court order limiting Trump’s out-of-court statements about potential witnesses in the case and barring disparaging or intimidating remarks about the judge, prosecutors and potential jurors, Reuters reported.

Trump’s defense team said in a court filing late on Monday that such restrictions would violate his free speech rights as he runs for president as the clear front-runner for the Republican nomination in 2024.

Trump had already publicly attacked Smith’s request, arguing it was an attempt to limit his criticism of the President Joe Biden, his likely opponent in the 2024 election.

“At bottom, the Proposed Gag Order is nothing more than an obvious attempt by the Biden Administration to unlawfully silence its most prominent political opponent,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in the filing.

Trump was indicted in August on four felony counts for allegedly attempting to intervene in the counting of votes and block the certification of the 2020 election, one of four criminal cases he faces. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Smith’s office said in a court filing this month that Trump threatened to undermine public confidence in the case and influence potential jurors with “near daily” social media attacks on prosecutors, US Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over the case, and residents of Washington, DC who will serve as jurors.

Prosecutors said Trump has a history of inspiring his supporters to harass and threaten people he singles out for public criticism.

Thousands of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, fighting with police and sending lawmakers fleeing for their lives, in a failed bid to overturn Trump’s election defeat. Trump continues to make the false claim that his loss was the result of fraud.

“We resolutely condemn the September 24 attack on the embassy of Cuba in the United States at which two Molotov cocktails were reportedly thrown,” the Russian diplomat said.

“(The attack) must not be left unpunished and those responsible for it should be punished heavily,” Zakharova said, as she urged Washington to conduct a thorough probe into the incident as soon as possible, TASS reported.

According to Zakharova, the latest incident is not the first such crime against the Cuban diplomatic mission in Washington which came amid what she said was “the atmosphere of ongoing threats against the government of the Island of Freedom.”

“Once again we call on the host country to unconditionally ensure the security of foreign diplomatic missions on its territory in strict compliance with international obligations. We express our solidarity with the brotherly people of the Republic of Cuba and our full support for their government,” the diplomat said.