Trump is set to testify along with Don Jr. and Ivanka at his store on July 15 as part of the New York Attorney General’s investigation — and faces a fine of up to $430,000 if he still refuses to follow his court order afford to
- Lawyers for Donald Trump and his eldest children agreed on the date
- New York State Attorney General Letitia James subpoenaed them late last year for their testimony, which they moved to court
- Meanwhile, a judge on Wednesday will weigh whether Trump met the conditions to remove a contempt charge in a separate lawsuit related to James’ investigation
- James’ office has been investigating the Trump Organization since 2019
- She alleges the company knowingly used misleading financial statements to obtain cheap credit and business while keeping taxes low
Donald Trump and his two eldest children have agreed to testify in the three-year investigation into their real estate deal by New York State Attorney General Letitia James, a court filing showed on Tuesday.
The trio will be deposed under oath on July 15, according to an agreement reached by prosecutors and attorneys for former Presidents Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr.
And that’s despite Trump repeatedly calling the James investigation a partisan “witch hunt” and attacking the Democratic official herself as a “racist.”
Late last month, a court rejected the Trumps’ efforts to vacate a New York State subpoena seeking their testimony.
In a separate lawsuit, Trump’s lawyer is reportedly facing James over a virtual trial in which a judge will decide whether the ex-president has met the requirements to clear a contempt charge and a $10,000 daily fine against him .
James had accused Trump of slowing down their investigations by refusing to release key financial documents – which Trump argued he simply did not have.
If the efforts of his attorney, Alina Habba, fail in court on Wednesday, he could be required to pay back the entire $430,000 retrospective contempt fee – having already spent over $110,000 to get rid of it.
James’ team claims to have uncovered “substantial evidence” that the Trump Organization knowingly used misleading financial reports in its business dealings for at least a decade.
New York Attorney General Letitia James has been investigating the Trump Organization since 2019. She subpoenaed Donald Trump and his two eldest children late last year
The company has been accused of inflating the value of its properties to look cheap for banks and getting better credit, then undercutting their estimates to save taxpayers’ money.
So far, the former president’s legal efforts to stop the investigation into James have come to nothing.
Just weeks ago, a Barack Obama-appointed judge dismissed a third lawsuit filed by Trump against the Democratic official who wanted to end her investigation by alleging she violated her constitutional rights.
Less than a week later, on June 1, he appealed the verdict.
Trump claimed James was acting out of political “animus” because she made many statements promising to bring Trump to justice. He also argued that investigating James violated his constitutional rights.
But US District Judge Brenda Sannes said Trump’s legal team failed to present concrete evidence that James acted in bad faith and their arguments were not “sufficient” to prove that claim.
The day before Sannes’ decision, one of her fellow judges at the US District Court for the Northern District of New York sided with James and ruled that Trump and his two eldest children must testify.
That decision upheld a Feb. 17 ruling by state Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron that required Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump to testify before James’ team.
Tuesday’s court filings show that both Trump and his children’s attorneys and James’s office have settled on July 15
Ivanka Trump was a former executive of the Trump Organization before leaving to serve in her father’s presidential administration. Donald Trump Jr., the eldest, is still the executive vice president there
Engoron had overridden Trump’s concerns that impeachment would violate his constitutional right to self-incrimination.
The former president and his two adult children were summoned to James’ office late last year.
In their challenge, they claimed that any information their team obtains could be unfairly used in a separate but parallel criminal investigation being conducted by the Manhattan Attorney’s Office.
The criminal investigation, started under former District Attorney Cyrus Vance, has lost momentum in recent months after being taken over by new District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Bragg said in a statement last month that the investigation is ongoing but gave little if any details on its progress. A grand jury set up for the inquiry expired in late April with no public attempts to extend it.
And Engoron is also the same judge who sided with James by charging Trump with contempt, along with handing out a daily fine of $10,000 for each day he failed to comply with her subpoena to hand over documents is.
Trump and his attorney had claimed that he did not have the paperwork James requested and that he had turned over everything else, while she claimed his reasons were inadequate.
