Judge orders Trump to sit for deposition in New York investigation

A state judge has ordered Donald Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr. and his daughter Ivanka Trump to sit for depositions within three weeks in New York Attorney General Letitia James' ongoing investigation of alleged financial improprieties at the Trump Organization.

In a ruling Thursday, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron roundly rejected bids by the Trumps to dodge giving testimony on grounds of James' alleged bias and that her office is conducting parallel criminal and civil investigations.

Engoron said all three Trumps have the option of showing up for the depositions and refusing to answer the questions based on their constitutional right not to testify against themselves.

"They have an absolute right to refuse to answer questions that they claim may incriminate them," the judge wrote in an eight-page order. "Indeed, respondent Eric Trump invoked his right against self-incrimination in response to more than 500 questions during his one-day deposition arising out of the instant proceeding."

The former president reacted angrily to the judge's decision.

"The targeting of a President of the United States, who got more votes while in office than any President in History, by far, and is a person that the Radical Left Democrats don’t want to run again, represents an unconstitutional attack on our Country—and the people will not allow this travesty of justice to happen," Trump said in a statement released Thursday evening, more than four hours after the ruling. "It is a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in history—and remember, I can’t get a fair hearing in New York because of the hatred of me by Judges and the judiciary. It is not possible!”

Lawyers for the Trumps did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but indicated earlier Thursday that they planned an appeal of any adverse decision.

In his order, Engoron said there was ample reason for James to investigate allegations of fraud at Trump's real estate empire. Indeed, the judge said the attorney general would have been remiss not to look into the issues, which include claims of artificially inflated and deflated valuations for tax, financing and insurance purposes.

"For OAG not to have investigated the original respondents, and not have subpoenaed the New Trump Respondents, would have been a blatant dereliction of duty (and would have broken an oft-repeated campaign promise)," the judge wrote.

Engoron's written decision spilled little ink over the Trumps' claims of selective prosecution, based on a variety of remarks James made during her campaign for attorney general, vowing to rigorously investigate the then-president and his businesses.

"That a prosecutor dislikes someone does not prevent a prosecution," Engoron wrote in his order, which required the former president, Donald Jr. and Ivanka to turn over relevant documents within two weeks.

The judge also ridiculed arguments in a Trump Organization statement this week that the former president's business was vindicated by a recent declaration by its longtime accountants, Mazars LLP, that it no longer has confidence in the firm's opinions vouching for the Trump group's financial statements from 2011 to 2020.

"The idea that an accounting firm's announcement that no one should rely on a decade's worth of financial statements that it issued based on numbers submitted by an entity somehow exonerates that entity and renders an investigation into its past practices moot is reminiscent of Lewis Carroll ... George Orwell; and 'alternative facts,'" Engoron wrote. He said the claim about the investigation being moot "is as audacious as it is preposterous."

The judge's ruling came just hours after a fiery court hearing in which attorneys for the former president and his children argued that James' investigation was hopelessly compromised by her public statements vowing to bring to justice Trump and his business interests.

The Trump lawyers also contended that James is violating the rights of the former president and his son and daughter by simultaneously pursuing a civil probe and a criminal probe in coordination with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

One relatively new lawyer for the former president — Bedminster, N.J.-based Alina Habba — also used the two-hour long videoconference to air a variety of Trump grievances with no obvious connection to the current dispute, including that he was improperly “spied” upon while he was a presidential candidate in 2016 and that his Democratic rival in that race, Hillary Clinton, was involved in financial improprieties.

Habba, who took over some of Trump's legal efforts last September, also mentioned at least twice that Trump may choose to run for president for a third time in 2024.

“Letitia James can’t run away from her own words,” an animated Habba declared, referring to a slew of statements James made as a candidate vowing to investigate and charge Trump. “If he was not who he is, she wouldn’t be doing this, your honor … She’s calling him an illegitimate president … No one seems to care that she has such disdain for this man, for this president.”

However, Engoron said during the hearing that he didn’t see how that amounted to “viewpoint discrimination,” as Trump’s attorneys claimed.

Habba insisted that the targeting was tied to Trump’s political ambitions. “If he was not sitting as a Republican and if he was not a former president who might run again, this would not be happening, so she is discriminating against him for that,” she asserted.

The judge also said it wasn’t his role to police James’ statements or whether they may have run afoul of legal ethics.

“She had First Amendment rights. She was a politician running for political office,” the judge observed.

Habba insisted that James’ bias was transparent and so pervasive that her efforts to take testimony from Trump and his children — who also served in top posts in his businesses — should be denied.

“The Clintons did have finances … they were getting money from Russia,” she said. “I didn’t see the attorney general do anything.”

Habba also alluded to recent court filings and press reports discussing an effort by Clinton allies in 2016 to mine internet connection data to establish whether people in Trump’s orbit were in contact with Russia.

“Miss James, are you going to go after Hillary Clinton for what she’s doing to my client that she spied at Trump Tower in your state? Are you going to look into her business dealings?” Habba asked, although James was not personally on the call and was represented by a lawyer from her office, Kevin Wallace.

Engoron dismissed the remarks.

“The Clintons are not before me,” he said, adding, “Those political considerations, that’s not what I’m here to do.”

Engoron also said he did not believe Trump’s status as a former president merited special treatment from the court. “You sort of brought up the 800-pound gorilla in the room,” he said to Trump criminal lawyer Ronald Fischetti. “I’m basically not trying to do anything differently. To me, he’s a citizen. ... Why should I do anything differently?”

The judge repeatedly noted that Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump all have the right to show up to the civil depositions James’ office has requested and assert their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. “Isn’t that what Eric Trump did 500 times?” Engoron asked, referring to an earlier deposition by another Trump son.

Fischetti said that was not a practical option for the former president.

“It will be on every front page in the newspaper in the world,” the attorney said, adding that if the former president is charged he could not get a fair trial. “How can I possibly pick a jury in that case?”

Fischetti also said James had exceeded her authority by running two parallel investigations. “There’s no case that says she can do this,” he said. “She can’t act as DA.”

Wallace, representing James, offered only brief rebuttals and took up just a fraction of the time used by the Trump-world lawyers. He quoted former U.S. Attorney and Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau saying, “A man is not immune from prosecution just because the U.S. attorney happens not to like him.”

Wallace also said the office has been careful to establish a factual basis for its investigation, which is known to focus on alleged fraud by the Trump organization, including in real estate valuations.

“This is a civil investigation. We are using a civil process,” he said. “This office is free to conduct both civil and criminal investigations. The idea that we can’t do both at the same time is not accurate. … It does happen. This isn’t all that extraordinary.”

However, Engoron noted that Wallace wasn’t vigorously defending James’ statements, particularly those as a candidate.

“They claim that you’re kind of avoiding the attorney general’s comments, some of which are very pointed, very aggressive,” the judge said. “Do we want to have a society or a country where somebody can say, ‘I don’t like this person,’ and then go after this person with all the resources at her disposal?”

“I don’t think that’s what we have here,” Wallace replied. He called Trump a “recidivist” and noted that Trump’s conduct had come under investigation by prior attorneys general, over Trump University and the Trump Foundation.

“I don’t think any of this suggests there was an improper motive or improper purpose,” Wallace said.

Although Engoron took no explicit stand, he seemed to disapprove of James’ remarks. “It’s a whole circus, arguably a circus, that Tish James has done,” he said, saying to James' lawyer at one point: “You’ve been relatively quiet.”

Habba certainly was not.

“Letitia James made it a circus,” Habba exclaimed late in the morning session “This is not normal because she made it abnormal. … There are ways that this court can help stop this circus.”

It was unclear if Trump was watching the protracted court arguments, which were streamed publicly over the internet, and a spokesperson for the former president did not respond to a request for comment. However, on Wednesday, his attorneys filed in the court docket an unusually lengthy public statement he released a day earlier, minimizing the decision by his longtime accounting firm, to declare that about a decade's worth of the Trump Organization's financial statements should not be relied upon.

"I wish they had the courage to fight it out, but they didn't, and who can blame them," Trump said of his former accountants, while offering a confusing and contradictory set of financial numbers which he said indicated his business empire has a current "net worth" of at least $8 billion to $9 billion.