Their gambit keep from testifying failed:
The New York attorney general can question Donald J. Trump and two of his adult children under oath as part of a civil inquiry into his business practices, a judge ruled on Thursday, rejecting the former president’s effort to block the interviews.
The inquiry by the attorney general, Letitia James, and a parallel criminal investigation led by the Manhattan district attorney are examining whether Mr. Trump improperly inflated the value of his assets to receive favorable loans.
Lawyers for the Trump family had sought to prohibit Ms. James, a Democrat, from interviewing Mr. Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump. They had argued that she was politically biased against Mr. Trump and was inappropriately using her civil inquiry to aid the district attorney’s criminal investigation, which she is also participating in.
But the judge, Arthur F. Engoron, wrote that “this argument completely misses the mark.”
He ruled in favor of Ms. James’s lawyers, who had asked that the former president and the two adult children be interviewed in the next three weeks. The order also requires that the former president provide the attorney general with documents she sought in her subpoena.
They can all take the 5th, of course, just like Eric Trump did in this case more than 500 times. But taking the 5th can be used against you in a civil case so if they go to trial a jury may very well find that to be suspicious when they are told that and are shown specifically which questions for which they claimed their right against self-incrimination. Yikes.
The judge’s decision followed a fiery virtual hearing in State Supreme Court on Thursday, during which lawyers for Mr. Trump and the attorney general made their cases. Several times, Mr. Trump’s lawyers became so heated that Judge Engoron and his law clerk had to call for a timeout — raising their hands in the shape of a “T,” a gesture more often seen at a sporting event than in a courtroom.
The hearing was by all accounts a three ring circus. Here is a tweet thread from @nycsouthpaw who followed the hearing:
Trump Sr. is represented at the hearing by Alina Habba, a litigator with offices in Bedminster, NJ. Alan Futerfas is representing the adult Trump children; he previously repped Don Jr. before the Mueller investigation, as well as (a long time ago) a number of NY mafia figures.
Futerfas is monopolizing the beginning of the hearing to push the idea that the NYAG’s investigation should be treated as a criminal matter, even though the AG’s office has no criminal jurisdiction, because (he says) they’re openly working hand-in-glove with the Manhattan DA.
Futerfas admits the Trump children could take the Fifth even in a civil investigation, but he’s arguing it remains unfair to civilly depose them, expose them to adverse inferences, etc rather than follow the criminal procedure under NY law of taking testimony before a grand jury. Futerfas doesn’t seem to be getting very far with Judge Arthur Engeron, who keeps asking why the Trumps can’t just refuse to answer questions and reminding him that adverse inferences in a civil context are what the law allows.
Alina Habba, the former president’s lawyer, finally gets a chance to speak and says–for the first time today–that they’re actually here seeking a stay of the civil investigation during the pendency of the criminal matter. Habba is asked whether the civil investigation is “solely” seeking evidence for a criminal case–the legal standard for a stay–and she responds with a bunch of (as far as I can tell) unconnected invective against AG Tish James for being biased against Trump.
You can argue with some sincerity that Tish James is biased, imo, but that doesn’t do anything to show that she’s not interested in imposing potential civil consequences like, e.g., civil fines or court-ordered dissolution of Trump entities that engaged in illegal conduct.
Another Trump lawyer, the former president’s criminal attorney Ron Fischetti, is also banging his fist on the table rather than saying anything new. Fischetti outlines a pithy rule for Trump testifying: “He gets immunity for what he says, or he says nothing!”
In response to Engeron’s inquiry, Futerfas and Fischetti both say their arguments don’t rely on Trump’s status as a former president, even though they previously called it a special case because of his old job.
As @rgrikard said, Habba’s presentation before Judge Engeron is fairly indistinguishable in cadence and logical coherence from a Fox News hit. “I’m not the attorney disciplinary committee,” the judge repeats, after she does another five minutes on AG James’ public statements.
Habba says Trump is a member of a “protected class.” “What protected class is he a member of?” the judge asks. She does not name one.
Given the first opportunity to respond at length, Kevin Wallace, the attorney from the NYAG’s office, quotes Robert Morgenthau talking about Roy Cohn:
“A man is not immune from prosecution simply because the U.S. Attorney doesn’t like him.”
“The evidence is irrelevant,” Habba says emphatically, underlining her argument about selective prosecution in perhaps not the most effective way.
Originally tweeted by southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) on February 17, 2022.
Update — You have to love this:
Former President Donald Trump said in a court filing Monday that he “denies knowledge or information sufficient to form a belief as to the truth” about his company’s finances. A day later, he issued a blistering 1,100-word statement in response to his longtime accounting firm Mazars USA dropping the Trump Organization as a client and claiming it could no longer stand by a decade’s worth of tax documents. Trump waxed lyrical about his company’s “fantastic assets” and said prosecutors should give consider giving Hillary Clinton the death penalty instead of investigating the Trump Organization’s finances.
“My company has among the best real estate and other assets anywhere in the world, has significant amounts of cash, and has relatively very little debt, which is totally current,” Trump said in the statement Tuesday.
[…]
“It is not unusual for parties to a legal proceeding to disagree about the facts,” wrote Austin Thompson, a lawyer for James’s office. “But it is truly rare for a party to publicly disagree with statements submitted by his own attorneys in a signed pleading — let alone one day after the pleading was filed. That is what Mr. Trump has done here.”