Trump Deposed for Seven Hours in NY Civil Suit

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Facts

• On Thursday, former US Pres. Donald Trump was deposed for close to seven hours as part of Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil lawsuit over fraud allegations against Trump and his family.¹
• James’ suit claims the Trump family provided false information about Trump’s net worth and the value of assets, including hotels and golf courses, to mislead Trump Organization banks and business partners.²
• James is seeking $250M in damages, the amount she believes Trump profited from the fraud. She also wants to ban the Trump family from doing business in the state of New York.³
• Trump, who has denied all wrongdoing in this case, previously sat for a deposition in August, a month before James filed the suit. The former president invoked his Fifth Amendment rights hundreds of times in that deposition.⁴
• Trump’s legal team’s attempt to have the October trial postponed was denied last month by Judge Arthur Engoron, who called it a “seemingly simple case.”⁴
• This was Trump's first trip back to New York since earlier this month, when he was arrested and pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records.⁵

Sources: ¹Al Jazeera, ²Associated Press, ³The Hill, ⁴ABC News and ⁵Independent.

Narratives

• Pro-Trump narrative, as provided by New York Post. Trump has nothing to hide, and he just proved it by withstanding a seven-hour grilling and describing his years of business success to a hostile attorney general’s office on a political witch hunt. Like every other ongoing investigation into the former president’s business and political actions, this civil case is ridiculous, and Trump is destined to prevail.
• Democratic narrative, as provided by Newsweek. We don’t know for sure if Trump actually testified instead of pleading the Fifth this time around, but if he did, his brashness might have dug him into a deeper hole. Juries in civil cases are allowed to use cases of defendants using the Fifth Amendment against them. And now anything he might’ve said in his deposition could be used in a future criminal case over the alleged business fraud. This wasn’t the decision of a business genius.

Predictions