LAST UPDATE | 13 Apr 2023
FORMER US PRESIDENT Donald Trump is due back in New York today to answer questions in a civil case that accuses him and three of his children of business fraud.
The deposition comes a week after Trump’s historic arraignment on criminal charges in a Manhattan courtroom in a separate case.
The 76-year-old Republican is due to be questioned under oath in the lawsuit brought by New York state attorney general Letitia James, the New York Times reported.
Trump himself appeared to confirm the deposition, his second in the case, in a post on his social media platform Truth Social.
He said would be “heading downtown to meet with a Racist who leaked that I would be there at 9:30 AM.”
Trump has repeatedly called New York prosecutors, who are Black and investigating him, racist.
James sued Trump, Donald Trump Jr, Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump in September last year alleging they committed “incredible” fraud at the Trump Organisation.
Her lawsuit asserts that they lied to tax collectors, lenders and insurers for years in a scheme that routinely misstated the value of Trump’s properties to enrich themselves.
James said they provided fraudulent statements of Trump’s net worth and false asset valuations “to obtain and satisfy loans, get insurance benefits, and pay lower taxes.”
Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for the 2024 White House race, has used his common refrain of “witch hunt” to describe the case.
He appeared for six hours of questioning in the case last August, shortly before James filed her lawsuit.
James has requested that Trump pay at least $250 million in penalties – a sum she says he made from the alleged fraud – and that his family be banned from running businesses in the state.
No criminal charges can stem from her case.
In a dramatic court appearance last Tuesday that transfixed the nation, Trump denied 34 felony counts related to hush money paid to a porn star.
He became the first former or sitting president to ever be charged with a crime.
Trump has since sued the key witness in his criminal case, accusing one-time lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen of “vast reputational harm” for talking publicly about the hush-money payments at the heart of the case.
The lawsuit, filed in Miami, offered a preview of arguments that are sure to be featured in Trump’s defence against charges that he falsified internal business records to disguise payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign to silence claims of extramarital sexual encounters.
The suit accused Cohen of breaking a confidentiality agreement he signed as a condition of his employment, violating ethical standards for lawyers and “spreading falsehoods” about Trump “with malicious intent and to wholly self-serving ends.”
It seeks more than half a billion dollars from Cohen.
Trump is not specifically suing Cohen over his grand jury testimony in the criminal case, but he cites it in support of an argument that his ex-lawyer sought to profit from his role through the publication of two books, a podcast series and media appearances.
Cohen’s spokesman, lawyer Lanny Davis, said the lawsuit will not deter Cohen’s cooperation with prosecutors.
“Mr Trump appears once again to be using and abusing the judicial system as a form of harassment and intimidation against Michael Cohen,” Davis said.
“It appears he is terrified by his looming legal perils and is attempting to send a message to other potential witnesses who are cooperating with prosecutors against him.”
The suit is the latest effort by Trump to use the legal system to go after his political enemies and is another example of the former president turning on a once-loyal aide after their relationship imploded.
A judge in Florida sanctioned Trump and one of his lawyers in January, ordering them to pay nearly one million dollars for filing what he said was a bogus lawsuit against Trump’s 2016 rival Hillary Clinton and others.
Davis predicted this lawsuit would also fail.
“Is there anyone in America, aside from a shrinking minority base of believers, who takes Mr Trump seriously when he files these apparently frivolous lawsuits?” Davis asked.
The criminal case against Trump, brought last week by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, accuses the former president of falsifying 34 business records at his company to hide the true nature of 11 checks paid to Cohen to reward him for work covering up Trump’s extramarital affairs.
Those checks, prosecutors said, reimbursed Cohen for a $130,000 payment he made on Trump’s behalf to porn actor Stormy Daniels, who had been in negotiations to sell her story of an alleged sexual encounter with the Republican.
Cohen also played a role in arranging payments to the Playboy model Karen McDougal and to a Trump Tower doorman.
Trump pleaded not guilty to the charges and says the alleged encounters with Daniels and McDougal never happened.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office yesterday declined to comment on Trump’s lawsuit against Cohen.
Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to tax evasion, lying to Congress, and campaign finance violations regarding the payments to Daniels and McDougal.
He was sentenced to three years in prison, although the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic enabled him to serve the majority of the sentence under house arrest.
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