Former U.S. President Donald Trump leaves Trump Tower to meet with New York Attorney General Letitia James for a civil investigation on August 10, 2022 in New York City.
James Devaney | Gc Images | Getty Images
President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he refused to answer questions at a deposition by investigators for the New York attorney general as part of a civil investigation into his business.
Trump made that announcement shortly after he arrived at the offices of AG Letitia James for his scheduled interview under oath as part of her probe of the Trump Organization.
“I once asked, ‘If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?’ Now I know the answer to that question,” Trump said in a furious statement that railed against James as a renegade prosecutor with a vendetta against him.
Trump’s refusal to answer questions came two days after the FBI, in an unrelated criminal investigation, searched his resort home Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida. The search was related to a investigation into whether laws were broken when boxes of White House records — which included some documents marked as classified — ended up at Mar-a-Lago instead of the National Archives, NBC News and other outlets reported.
James’ investigation, meanwhile, involves allegations that the Trump Organization improperly reported the stated valuations of some of its real estate assets for financial gain.
Trump has denied wrongdoing. In a post on his social media platform, Trump revealed that he would be deposed Wednesday morning as part of what he called “a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in U.S. history!”
Trump and two of his adult children, Donald Jr. and Ivanka Trump, resisted for months subpoenas from James demanding their testimony under oath for her probe.
But after failing in court efforts to block those subpoenas, Donald Jr. and Ivanka answered questions from James’ investigators last week.
Trump left his residence at Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan on Wednesday morning to travel to James’ office downtown for his own deposition.
Neither Donald Trump Jr. nor his sister Ivanka Trump invoked their Fifth Amendment right when they were questioned last week by James’ investigators, NBC has previously reported. However, Eric Trump, who runs the Trump Organization with Donald Jr., invoked his Fifth Amendment right more than 500 times when he was questioned under oath in the probe in October 2020, according to a court filing from January.
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