"The people call Donald J. Trump," state attorney Kevin Wallace said.

With that, Donald Trump rose from his seat, made the short walk from the counsel table to the witness stand, and took a seat.

To his immediate right sits Judge Arthur Engoron and his clerk Allison Greenfield, who Trump has repeatedly criticized as biased. Directly across from him and in eyeshot is New York Attorney General Letitia James, who sits in the courtroom's gallery with her eyes fixed on the former president.

Trump, wearing a tailored navy blue suit, blue dress shirt, and blue tie, sits slightly slouched in the witness box.

"Please raise your right hand," a court officer advised Trump. "Do you solemnly swear or affirm that any testimony you give will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?"

"I do," Trump said with his hand raised.

New York Attorney General Letitia James briefly conferred with her team of lawyers in court this morning before taking her seat in the gallery.

Before entering the courtroom, James predicted that Trump will likely engage in "name calling, taunts, [and] race baiting" to distract from his testimony.

"Before he takes the stand, I am certain that he will engage in name calling, taunts, race baiting, and call this a witch hunt," James told reporters. "But at the end of the day, the only thing that matters are the facts and the numbers, and numbers, my friends, don't lie."

Senior Enforcement Counsel Kevin Wallace of the New York attorney general's office will lead the direct examination of Donald Trump when the former president takes the stand this morning.

Wallace led the depositions of Trump during the New York attorney general's investigation and also delivered the state's opening statement in the trial.

"The defendants were lying year after year," Wallace said in his opening statement.

A constant presence in court during the trial, Wallace joined the New York AG's office in 2018 after working in the private sector for 15 years.

Wallace and Trump sparred for hours during Trump's April deposition, according to a transcript of the deposition that was subsequently released by the AG's office.

"We're going to be here until midnight if your client answers every question with an eight-minute speech," Wallace remarked after one of Trump's lengthier answers.

Wallace tried to press Trump on spreadsheets that Wallace displayed during the deposition, promoting frequent objections from Trump's lawyers.

"Oh my God -- are you people capable of reading a spreadsheet?" an exasperated Wallace said after one objection from Trump's attorney Chris Kise.

Donald Trump's motorcade has arrived at the New York State Supreme Courthouse in lower Manhattan.

Court is scheduled to get underway at 10 a.m. ET, with Trump scheduled as the day's only witness.

Deutsche Bank was a serious company in business with Donald Trump to make money, defense attorney Jesus Suarez said during his cross examination of former Deutsche Bank executive Nicholas Haigh.

At the height of its relationship with the Trump Organization the company loaned Trump over $378 million, and failed to commission independent appraisals of Trump's properties, Haigh acknowledged. While the bank listed lower estimates for the value of Trump's assets year after year, it continued to do business with Trump and his company.

"We ... the bank hadn't done all the due diligence one would do in the sense of the opinion of value you see in an appraisal," Haigh said, at one point agreeing with the defense's characterization that the bank's internal value services group conducted "sanity checks'' on the numbers.

The direct examination of Haigh by state attorney Kevin Wallace also left a central question about Deutsche Bank's activity unanswered.

In a letter to the court and in previous arguments, lawyers for the attorney general suggested that Haigh might have turned away Trump's business if he had known that Trump's assets were inflated in value.

"As this Court noted during summary judgment arguments, Mr. Haigh testified during OAG's investigation that he may not have authorized lending to the borrower if he had at that time been aware of the inflated asset values contained in Mr. Trump's SFCs [statements of financial condition]," a lawyer for the attorney general wrote to the court in a letter last week.

Wallace never directly posed the hypothetical to Haigh during his direct examination, leaving the question unresolved.

Court subsequently adjourned for the day, with Suarez telling the court he plans to continue his cross examination of Haigh through Thursday afternoon.