What to Know After Closing Arguments in Trump’s Civil Fraud Trial

A judge’s decision lies ahead, and appeals are highly likely. But this case could end Mr. Trump’s decades-long role in the New York real-estate business.

Donald J. Trump’s civil fraud trial went out with a bang on Thursday, with the former president delivering an impassioned defense during closing arguments.

Mr. Trump attacked both the New York attorney general who brought the case and the judge overseeing it, casting himself as a victim of what he claimed was their partisan crusade against him. The attorney general’s office countered that, leaving aside his denials and antics, Mr. Trump orchestrated a sweeping fraud in which he inflated his net worth to obtain favorable loans and other benefits.

The dueling narratives marked a chaotic end to a trial that had unnerved Mr. Trump and threatened his family business.

Now, after a monthslong proceeding, which featured reams of documents and testimony from Mr. Trump and his adult sons, the decision rests with the judge, Arthur F. Engoron. There is no jury.

Here are the key takeaways from the closing arguments, and what they mean for Mr. Trump in the months ahead.

If offered an opportunity, Trump will do what he wants.

When a lawyer for Mr. Trump raised the possibility that the former president might speak on his own behalf during closing arguments, Justice Engoron was open to the idea.

“In a non-jury trial, I am inclined to let everyone have his or her say,” he wrote in an email last week. He cautioned that Mr. Trump would have to abide by the rules that apply to lawyers. He would have to stick to the facts of the case and the law and refrain from attacking Letitia James, the attorney general; the judge himself; or the judge’s staff members.

The lawyer, Christopher M. Kise, objected, but the judge insisted. And when Mr. Kise missed a deadline to agree, it seemed that Mr. Trump had given up.

He had not.

On Thursday, Mr. Kise asked the judge again whether the former president could deliver his own closing argument. The judge seemed inclined to allow it, but addressed the former president directly, asking him to restrain himself and abide by those conditions.

That was all the permission Mr. Trump needed. He took the microphone, said that he did not see how he could stick to the facts and the law when the case went beyond them and then monologued for five minutes. He attacked the judge, saying, “You have your own agenda.” He went after Ms. James, accusing her of perpetrating “a fraud on me.”

Perhaps the most surprising feature of Mr. Trump’s closing argument was that he stopped willingly after five minutes. When the lunch break arrived, Justice Engoron asked him to finish, and Mr. Trump obliged.

It will be a few weeks before a final ruling.

The attorney general argues that Mr. Trump and the other defendants violated New York law. She is asking that the judge set a penalty of about $370 million — which she says is the amount the Trump business gained through the fraud — and that the former president and other defendants be barred from New York’s real estate industry and from managing any company in the state.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers counter that Ms. James has no evidence that links the former president to any fraud. “Not one witness came into this courtroom, your honor, and said there was fraud,” Mr. Kise said in his closing argument.

But the public will remain in suspense until the end of this month at the earliest. While Justice Engoron said Thursday he knew that everyone was eager for a decision, he promised only that he would do his best to deliver one by Jan. 31.

Many signs point to Justice Engoron’s ruling against Mr. Trump. In the past, he has been persuaded by Ms. James’s arguments, including before the trial, when he ruled in her favor, finding that Mr. Trump had committed fraud by inflating his assets and thus his net worth. The bulk of the trial concerned whether Mr. Trump’s conduct had violated other New York laws, as well as the potential punishments.

Good omens for Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.

Although Justice Engoron appears poised to bring down the hammer on Mr. Trump, the former president’s sons might fare better.

When Ms. James sued Mr. Trump, she also named Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., as defendants. But on Thursday, as the attorney general’s office argued that they played a role in creating some of Mr. Trump’s financial statements, the judge expressed doubt that Ms. James had proven her case against them. In particular, he seemed skeptical that the attorney general had sufficiently tied Donald Trump Jr. to wrongdoing.

“I haven’t seen it,” Justice Engoron said, offering the Trump sons some hope that they might escape relatively unscathed.

Appeals will stretch out the case.

Justice Engoron’s decision this month is unlikely to represent the end of this case, or even the beginning of the end. It is probably only the end of the beginning.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers have already appealed some of the judge’s decisions — including the pretrial ruling in which he found that Mr. Trump had committed fraud — and an appeals court is likely to hear about much of the case. If Mr. Trump does not find success there, he could also attempt to appeal to New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals.

Those efforts are likely to take months to play out and may not be resolved by Election Day, as Mr. Trump continues to seek a second term as president.

Trump’s trials are only beginning.

As important as the civil fraud case was to Mr. Trump, and as hard as he has fought it for years, Ms. James cannot imprison the former president.

But Mr. Trump still faces 91 felony charges spread across four criminal indictments in courthouses up and down the East Coast, including for his role in a hush-money deal with a porn star and his effort to overturn his 2020 election loss. If convicted, he could face years behind bars.

The timing of the trials is hugely significant. Mr. Trump has sought to delay them until after the election. If he wins, the cases would almost certainly grind to a halt.