Donald J. Trump has long mocked public figures who invoke their constitutional right against self-incrimination, but on Wednesday he made the most of the Fifth Amendment.
For hours under oath, Mr. Trump sat in front of New York State Attorney General Letitia James, answering every question posed by her investigators by repeating the phrase “same answer” over and over.
The refusal of Mr. Trump’s failure to respond substantially to any questions in the court-ordered deposition was an unexpected turn that could determine the course of the three-year civil investigation of Ms. James about whether the former president fraudulently inflated the value of his assets to secure loans and other benefits.
It was also an extraordinary moment in an extraordinary week, even by the former president’s standards. Two days after his home was searched by the FBI in an unrelated investigation, Mr. Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment right while openly questioning the legitimacy of the legal process — as he has done with the U.S. election system. nation—and was insulting a law enforcement official sitting just right. a few meters away.
The only detailed comment from Mr. Trump, people with knowledge of the proceedings said, was an all-out attack on the attorney general and her investigation, which he called a continuation of “the biggest witch hunt in the history of our country.”
“I once asked, ‘If you’re innocent, why do you accept the Fifth Amendment?'” he said as he read a prepared statement, which overlapped significantly with one he released to the public. “Now I know the answer to that question.” He said he was being targeted by lawyers, prosecutors and the media, and that left him with “absolutely no choice” but to do so.
Mrs. James is now left with a crucial decision: whether to sue Mr. Trump or seek a deal that could extract a significant economic penalty. And while refusing to answer questions may have offered the safest route for the former president, it could strengthen Ms James’ hand in the coming weeks.
In a statement Wednesday, a spokeswoman for Ms. James said: “Attorney General James will pursue the facts and the law wherever they lead. Our investigation continues.”
The meeting, the first time the former president had faced off directly with Ms. James, who has become his main antagonist in New York, came at a particularly dangerous time for Trump. On Monday, the FBI searched his Florida home and private club in Palm Beach, Fla., as part of an investigation into sensitive material he took when he left the White House.
The search was an embarrassing reminder of the multiple inquiries that swirled around the former president in relation to his conduct in the final weeks of his presidency. In addition to the investigation that triggered the FBI search, federal prosecutors are questioning witnesses about their involvement in efforts to reverse his election loss; a House select committee held a series of hearings tying him closer to the January 6 attack on the Capitol; and a Georgia district attorney is investigating possible election interference by Mr. Trump and his allies.
Ms James is conducting a civil investigation and cannot bring criminal charges against the former president. But the Manhattan district attorney’s office has conducted a parallel criminal investigation into whether Mr. Trump fraudulently inflated the valuations of his properties.
This criminal investigation took into account the decision of Mr. Trump did not respond to questions, said a person with knowledge of his thinking.
Any missteps could have given new life to that investigation, which lost momentum earlier this year, and the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, had said he would closely monitor the interview.
There were other compelling reasons for Mr. Trump to remain silent. If the attorney general had found that any of Mr. Trump’s answers contradicted the evidence in his investigation, the inconsistency could have prompted a separate perjury investigation.
But his decision could have a significant impact on any trial if Ms. James’s investigation leads to a lawsuit. In many cases, juries in civil matters may draw an adverse inference when a defendant invokes his Fifth Amendment privilege, unlike in criminal cases, where the exercise of the right against self-incrimination cannot be held against the defendant .
And if Ms. James prevails in a civil lawsuit, a judge could impose heavy financial penalties on Mr. Trump and restrict his business operations in New York.
With this threat in hand, the lawyers of Ms. James could use the refusal of Mr. Trump to answer questions as leverage in the deal talks.
Keeping quiet could also hurt Mr. Trump politically at a time when he is hinting that he will join the 2024 presidential race; it might raise questions about what he might be trying to hide.
For years, Mr. Trump has treated everything that happens on a legal front with his business as a potential opportunity to shape public perception. Maybe not this time. The New York attorney general’s investigation is very much a legal issue, and not answering questions was, first and foremost, a legal maneuver.
Still, the former president has long been seen as his best spokesman, and those who have questioned him in the past, as well as some of his own advisers, believed he was unlikely to stay silent.
Mr Trump has derided witnesses who have refused to take questions, once remarking at a rally that refusing to answer questions under oath was a sign of guilt on which the mob relies. “You see the mob takes the fifth,” he said. (Indeed, he has exercised his Fifth Amendment right before, refusing to answer questions in a statement made in connection with his divorce from his first wife, Ivana Trump.)
After being persuaded not to answer questions by his legal team, Mr. Trump left Trump Tower at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday. After waving to a small crowd that had gathered outside the building, he headed downtown to Ms. James’ office in a convoy of black SUVs, arriving around 9 in the morning
Her statement began shortly thereafter and began with Ms. James introducing herself and the investigation. He then turned the questioning over to one of the attorneys in his office, Kevin Wallace.
One of the lawyers of Mr. Trump, Ronald P. Fischetti, said that for about four hours, Mr. Trump answered only one question about his name.
Mr. Trump’s legal team had not alerted the attorney general that he planned to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights. This account of the deposition is based on interviews with people familiar with the proceedings, some of whom spoke on condition of anonymity to answer questions about a confidential proceeding.
After asking for his name, the former president read his statement announcing this intention into the minutes. In the statement, he called Ms. James, who was sitting a few feet away, a “renegade prosecutor.”
After reading the statement, Mr. Trump began repeating the words “same answer.” It was “same answer” until the lawyers broke for lunch, and “same answer” thereafter until, shortly after 3pm, the interview ended and Mr Trump left the building.
The interview was significantly shorter than that of his daughter Ivanka Trump, who did not finish answering questions until the evening when she was questioned days earlier.
Neither she nor Donald Trump Jr., who was also interviewed in recent days, invoked the Fifth Amendment. But Eric Trump, who was interviewed in October 2020, cited the amendment hundreds of times.
Since March 2019, the office of Ms. James has investigated whether Mr. Trump and his company improperly inflated the value of their hotels, golf clubs and other assets. Mr. Trump has long rejected Ms. James’s investigation and fought hard not to be questioned under oath, but was forced to do so after several judges ruled against him this spring.
Shortly after the questioning began Wednesday morning, Mr. Trump released the statement saying he would invoke his Fifth Amendment right, explaining that he “refused to answer questions about the rights and privileges granted by the United States Constitution to all citizens.”
The statement he released publicly and the one he read at the start of the interview explicitly linked his refusal to answer questions to the FBI’s search of his home, casting the actions as part of ‘a bigger conspiracy. (The two investigations are unrelated.)
In trying to defend a lawsuit by Ms. James — and in negotiating a possible settlement with her investigators — Mr. Trump’s lawyers are likely to argue that real estate valuation is a subjective process and that his company simply estimated the value of the its properties, without the intention of artificially inflating them.
Although Ms. James has claimed in court documents that the Trump Organization provided false appraisals to banks to secure favorable loans, Mr. Trump could argue that they were sophisticated financial institutions that profited greatly from their dealings with Mr. trump
Mr. Trump’s deposition represented the culmination of months of legal wrangling. In January, Mr. Trump asked a New York judge to quash a subpoena from Ms. James seeking her testimony and personal documents. The judge, Arthur F. Engoron, sided with Ms. James and ordered the Trumps to testify, a ruling that an appeals court upheld.
And at the request of Ms. James, Justice Engoron held that Mr. Trump was in contempt of court, and considered that he had not complied with the terms of the subpoena of Ms. James to ask for his documents. It was an embarrassing two-week episode that forced Mr. Trump to pay a $110,000 fine.
Mr Trump is no stranger to facing questions under oath, once boasting of having sat through “over 100 depositions”. A lawyer who once questioned Mr Trump described him as “completely…