The Conrad Black trial continues, and—though the defense announced yesterday that they will not be calling Donald Trump as a witness—the circus nonetheless continues.

And in the latest courtroom drama, the media mogul's defense team called an expert witness to the stand in the hopes that he might legitimize Black's exorbitant home decorating costs as business expenses. Unfortunately, that tends to be rather difficult when the 'minor renovations' total, oh, approximately $4.6 million.

Conrad Black renovated a New York apartment with $4.6m (£2.31m) of fittings, including an antique Chinese carpet, a Napoleonic shaving basin and an Indian marble sculpture - simply in order to bring it up to a "habitable" condition, a jury heard today.

Fighting charges of fraud and racketeering, Lord Black's lawyers called an accountant, Lee Williams, as an expert witness to testify that all of the former Telegraph owner's expenditure was legitimate.

The defense strategy worked flawlessly for approximately thirty seconds, at which point the moment prosecution began their cross-examination of the witness, who found himself rather unable to explain how items such as "a 1920s Chinese carpet costing $33,000" or "a Persian mother of pearl box for $9,600" could be deemed worthwhile business write-offs.

And while we applaud the prosecutors for mercilessly grilling Black's accountant over each extravagant purchase (i.e. $12,500 "mahogany barbiere with porcelain bottle that belonged to Napoleon during the campaign of Russia") we're fairly certain Black already alienated most members of the jury with his assertion that $4.6 million was required to make his 4500 sq. ft loft "habitable."

Because as much as we believe in the equity of our country's legal system, far as anyone who's ever lived in a squalid Astoria studio is concerned, a crotchety old man bitching about his uninhabitable Park Avenue mansion is automatically guilty.