Former president Donald Trump plans to return to New York for a second round of questioning Thursday in a lawsuit brought by Attorney General Letitia James over his business dealings, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal details.
It was not immediately clear what the focus of the questioning would be.
A judge overseeing James’s lawsuit set an October trial date and has repeatedly said he would not move the start date to accommodate delays in the discovery process, which has been ongoing for months.
James’s lawsuit alleges that Trump, three of his adult children and others at the Trump Organization purposely misled lenders and insurance companies about the value of his assets to secure favorable rates. The lawsuit has the potential to effectively cripple the Trump family’s business operations in New York, where the commercial real estate and golf resort business is headquartered. James (D) is seeking to recover more than $250 million in what her office called ill-gotten gains from fraud, and bar the Trumps from serving as executives of any company operating in New York.
Trump and his family have repeatedly denied wrongdoing and called James’s inquiry a “witch hunt,” pointing to statements she made on the campaign trail in which she promised to investigate him.
Trump spent hours with the New York attorney general in an August deposition, during which he repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to answer questions.
Trump emerged from the session with praise for the “very professional” way James’s team handled the meeting, in which he refused more than 400 times to answer questions about his businesses, property valuations and loans, according to a person with knowledge of the discussion. This person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the closed session, said Trump stated his name, formally declared his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself, and from then on replied to many questions with two words: “Same answer.”
That deposition came just weeks before James filed the lawsuit, the result of a two-year investigation into the Trump Organization.
“The inflated asset valuations in the [financial] Statements cannot be brushed aside or excused as merely the result of exaggeration or good faith estimation about which reasonable real estate professionals may differ,” the lawsuit says.
Thursday’s deposition will see Trump return to New York, where he was arraigned last Tuesday on charges stemming from hush money payments made to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election.
(c) 2023, The Washington Post · Shayna Jacobs, Josh Dawsey
