Trump’s decades of testimony provide some clues about how he’ll fight for his real estate empire

NEW YORK — Donald Trump has testified in court as a football owner, casino builder and airline buyer. He bragged in a deposition that he saved “millions of lives” by deterring nuclear war as president. Another time, he fretted about the dangers of flung fruit.

Conditioned by decades of trials and legal disputes, Trump is now poised to reprise his role as witness under extraordinary circumstances: as a former Republican president fighting to save the real estate empire that vaulted him to stardom and the White House.

Trump is set to testify today at his New York civil fraud trial, taking the stand in a deeply personal matter that is central his image as a successful businessman and threatens to cost him control of marquee properties such as Trump Tower. His highly anticipated testimony in the trial of New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit follows that of his eldest sons, Trump Organization executives Eric and Donald Trump Jr., who testified last week. His eldest daughter, Ivanka, is set to testify on Wednesday.

Trump has testified in court in at least eight trials since 1986, according to an Associated Press review of court records and news coverage. He also has been questioned under oath in more than a dozen depositions and regulatory hearings.

In 1985, he was called to testify before Congress as owner of the USFL’s New Jersey Generals and he testified on behalf of lawyer and friend Roy Cohn at a state disciplinary hearing that led to Cohn’s disbarment. In an early flash of his firebrand persona, in 1986, Trump told New Jersey’s casino commission that plans for highway overpasses near one of his casinos “would be a disaster. It would be a catastrophe.”

Those testimonies, captured in thousands of pages of transcripts and some on videotape, offer clues to the approach Trump is likely to take when he testifies Monday. They show clear parallels between Trump as a witness and Trump as a president and current candidate for the office. His rhetorical style in legal proceedings over the years bears echoes of his political verve: a mix of ego, charm, defensiveness, aggressiveness, sharp language and deflection. He has been combative and boastful, but sometimes vague and prone to hedging or being dismissive.

Testifying in the USFL’s antitrust lawsuit against the NFL in 1986, Trump denounced allegations that he had spied on NFL officials at one of his hotels, calling the claim “such a false interpretation it’s disgusting.”

In 1988, as he sought to buy Eastern Air Lines’ Northeast shuttle service, Trump turned on the charisma, flashing a wide smile at the judge’s female law clerks and shaking hands with the bailiff during a break in his testimony at a federal court hearing in Washington. Trump testified that his $365 million purchase, later approved, would be a “major boost in morale” for employees.

On the stand in a boxing-related case in 1990, Trump described a Mike Tyson fight he planned for one of his casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, as “one of the greatest rematches you could have.”

Accused by two men of cutting them out of a riverboat gambling project, Trump professed ignorance, testifying in 1999: “I was shocked by this whole case. I had no idea who these people were.”

Trump was briefly called to the witness stand in the New York case last month to explain comments outside of court that the judge said violated a limited gag order.

Before that, he last testified in a courtroom in 2013, two years before launching his winning presidential campaign. An 87-year-old suburban Chicago widower had sued him over changes to contract terms for a hotel and condominium tower she had bought units in as an investment. Trump grew increasingly agitated as his testimony wore on, at one point raising his arms and bellowing: “And then she sued me. It’s unbelievable!”

In 1990, Trump testified in a losing effort in a lawsuit over his company’s failure to make pension contributions on behalf of about 200 undocumented Polish workers hired to tear down a building to make way for Trump Tower. A year later, he was in court again in Manhattan, testifying against a man who claimed he had a contract to develop Trump’s board game and was owed 25% of profits from “Trump: The Game.”

Trump won that one and another lawsuit in 2005, where he testified that a construction company had “fleeced” him by overcharging him by $1.5 million for work at a golf course in New York’s Westchester County.

When questioned in the past about his business and financial dealings, Trump has sometimes deflected responsibility and blame. In a 2013 deposition over a failed Florida condo project, Trump blamed an employee for paperwork that said he was developing a project when, in reality, he wasn’t.

Another refrain in Trump’s depositions is his incredulity that he would be taken so seriously for hyping up his real estate projects.

“You always want to put the best possible spin on a property that you can,” Trump said in a December 2007 deposition in his lawsuit against a journalist he had accused of downplaying his wealth. “No different than any other real estate developer, no different than any other businessman, no different than any politician.”