The evidentiary record in the $250 million Trump civil fraud trial in New York State Supreme Court has been completed. But the evidence before Judge Engoron does not tell the entire sordid tale behind former President Donald Trump’s fraudulent financial statements.

What the trial has not revealed is that the Trump Organization’s false financial statements are connected to a much larger corrupt pattern of persistent and continuing financial fraud and tax cheating that originated at least as early as the 1990’s, when Trump’s businesses turned into a colossal financial train wreck.

This background was neither a subject of the trial nor an element of the claims alleged in New York Attorney General Letitia James’s complaint. But it does suggest why Trump ultimately falsified his financial statements. It also soundly rebuts Don Jr.’s trial testimony that his father was a “visionary” and an “artist with real estate.” What it does show is that Trump is nothing more than a classic con artist.

The financial woes that led to Trump’s creation of the false financial statements can be traced back to 1991, when he filed for bankruptcy after the financial collapse of his Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City. That debacle was followed by five other bankruptcy filings — two more casinos in 1992, the New York City Trump Plaza hotel in 1992, the 2004 bankruptcy of the Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts and the 2009 bankruptcy of Trump Entertainment Resorts.

Having run his businesses into the ground, Trump became a financial pariah unable to obtain funding from legitimate........

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