Former President Trump answered some seven hours of questions while being deposed Thursday in New York State’s $250 million civil suit alleging business fraud.
In doing so, Trump reversed an earlier decision to invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Last August during a deposition in James’ office, he’d pleaded the Fifth more than 400 times.
New York State Attorney General Letitia James is suing Trump, his companies and its officers including three of Trump’s adult children over allegations of bank, tax and insurance fraud.
The attorney general’s lawsuit alleges that Trump and his organization perpetrated more than 200 instances of fraud over 10 years in efforts to inflate his personal net worth to attract favorable loan agreements.
On Thursday, Trump attorney Alina Habba said he was “not only willing but also eager to testify.”
After the deposition in James’ business office another attorney, Christopher Kise who represents Trump’s businesses, said the former President had spent nearly seven hours “describing in detail his extraordinary business success.”
“The transactions at the center of this case were wildly profitable for the banks and for the Trump entities,” Kise said. “When the facts of this success, and not politically engineered soundbites, are out in the open, everyone will scoff at the notion any fraud took place.”
The deposition, which is part of discovery in the case, comes after Trump was arraigned on April 4 in Manhattan criminal court on 34 counts of falsifying business records and conspiracy related to hush money payments made during the 2016 Presidential election.
Trump has called James’ case (as well as the hush money case) a political witch hunt. In a social media post Thursday, Trump—who’s running for reelection in 2024—called the lawsuit “ridiculous , just like all of the other Election Interference cases being brought against me.”
James declined to answer questions about the deposition at a news conference on Wednesday.
