NY Attorney General Letitia James wins as Donald Trump caves
Donald Trump has gone to desperate lengths to try to avoid cooperating with New York Attorney General Letitia James in her civil investigation into the Trump Organization. Trump even got himself held in contempt of court for failing to turn over subpoenaed documents, which he ended up turning over. Now James has also apparently won the testimony battle over Trump as well.
Now that the courts have definitively ruled that Donald Trump and two of his kids must testify in Letitia James’ probe, and Trump has run out of appeals, Trump and his kids have agreed to indeed testify, per ABC News. Their agreement is contingent upon the courts intervening in their favor at the last minute, which is highly unlikely to happen.
This isn’t surprising. Given the precedent in this case, if Trump and his family refused to testify, they’d end up right back in contempt of court again, which – as Trump just found out – is a no win situation.
Now comes the question of how Donald Trump’s testimony will go. If he lies, he can be criminally charged for perjury. If he tells the truth, he’ll be incriminating his company, and by extension himself. If he pleads the fifth in order to avoid incriminating himself, James can use Trump’s refusal to defend the Trump Organization as a basis for ruling against it.
The bottom line is that while Trump dragged this out for as long as he could, he’s now finally out of options. Delay tactics in these kinds of situations can be extensive, but are always finite in the end. Once Letitia James presumably concludes that the Trump Organization must be dismantled and that its assets be taken, we’ll see whether she also brings the criminal charges against Trump that the Manhattan DA punted on earlier this year.
