By Ashe O
New York, Aug 10 (IANS): Even as uncertainty looms over whether ex-President Donald Trump will show up at the New York Attorney General's office for a scheduled deposition on Wednesday, its fairly clear that he could be in for a grilling at Manhattan by the lawyers attached to the office of AG Letitia James, following charges of misstating property values to win tax breaks and bank loans.
Trump is scheduled to sit for his long-delayed, court-ordered deposition on Wednesday morning in the New York Attorney General's inquiry into his Manhattan-based empire of golf resorts and real estate, Business Insider has learned.
Trump will be grilled in person in Manhattan on what New York's Attorney General, Letitia James, has alleged is a decade-long pattern of financial misstatements on documents used by the Trump Organisation to win hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks and bank loans.
The deposition was confirmed to Insider by a person with knowledge of the timing. Not long after Insider's story was published, Trump suggested on his social media platform, Truth Social, that the deposition would go ahead on Wednesday. By 7 a.m., Secret Service, the NYPD and a posse of press were in position at the lower Manhattan office building where the AG has her New York City offices, and from which her inquiry has been launched.
Security was high in anticipation of the former President's motorcade, including Secret Service conducting sweeps of the building's underground parking garage. Trump's hours-long, taped deposition will be the latest in a quick succession of major legal hurdles this week for the former President.
On Monday, FBI agents searched Trump's home and office at his waterfront Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. On Tuesday, a federal appeals court panel ruled that Congress is entitled to Trump's tax returns.
The New York Attorney General has sought since January to question Trump under oath about his financial documents. His original subpoena had ordered him to appear before the Attorney General on January 7. Trump's lawyers fought the subpoena in court for more than six months but lost in both state Supreme Court and in the First Department Appellate Division, both in Manhattan.
As a result of those court losses, the former President and his eldest son and daughter - Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump - had been scheduled to be deposed on July 20, 21, and 22. But those dates were delayed with the Attorney General's consent because of Ivana Trump's death on July 14.
Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump - both of whom have served as Trump Organisation Executive Vice Presidents - sat for their depositions last week, insider recalled.
Their brother Eric Trump, also a Vice President for the company, invoked his Fifth Amendment right more than 500 times when he sat for a James deposition in October 2020.
Trump is having a bad run for the GOP primaries to select him for the 2024 presidential run following the Mar A Lago residence FBI raid to unearth alleged classified documents he took home after his Presidency ended, instead of handing them over to the national archives, the explosive statements against him for his alleged involvement in the Jan 06 capital insurrection by a congressional panel and more and more Republicans turning away from him and his best fundraisers looking for alternative candidates.
The tax evasion case is the tipping point in a long line of charges by Democrats to convict and impeach him to discredit him from occupying the Oval Office again. Trump has described all charges against him as part of a witch hunt by the Democrats.