A judge in Manhattan has set a date next month for Trump Organization
Vice President Eric Trump to answer questions under oath about financial transactions
related to his family's real estate business.
State Judge Arthur Engoron ruled the Trump
Organization must also turn over all financial documents related to several of the president's properties,
including Seven Springs Estates in Bedford.
The state has been investigating President Donald Trump and the Trump Organization since last year after his former lawyer,
Michael Cohen, told Congress the organization
was inflating some of its property values for better loans and insurance while
lowering others to reduce property taxes.
The organization's vice president, and President Donald Trump's son, Eric
Trump, fought to delay turning over documents or testifying, arguing he is
campaigning for his father's reelection.
Judge Engoron said Eric Trump had no
legal basis to postpone a subpoena seeking his deposition testimony under oath,
concluding that neither the probe nor the court were “bound by the timelines of
the national election.”
New York Attorney General
Letitia James went to court to enforce the subpoena after Eric Trump’s lawyers
abruptly canceled a July interview with investigators looking into whether the
Trump Organization lied about the value of its assets in order to get loans or
tax benefits. The investigation is civil, not criminal, in nature and
investigators have yet to determine whether any law was broken.
James, a Democrat, said
Wednesday’s ruling “makes clear that no one is above the law, not even an
organization or an individual with the name Trump.”
A message seeking comment was
left with Eric Trump’s lawyer, Alan Futerfas.
In a court filing last week,
Eric Trump’s lawyers said he was willing to comply with the subpoena, but could
do so only after the Nov. 3 election. In addition to scheduling conflicts
related to his father’s reelection campaign, they said they wanted “to avoid
the use of his deposition attendance for political purposes.”
Futerfas told Engoron they
were “happy for him to sit down and be deposed,” but
needed more time to review with him thousands of pages of documents sought by
James’ office. Any deposition would happen out of public view and would likely
remain confidential because of the ongoing investigation.
“As the world knows, there’s
an election going on in about four weeks in this country, maybe five weeks,”
Futerfas told Engoron. “Eric Trump is a vital and integral part of that, and
he’s traveling just about seven days a week.”
Matthew Colangelo, a lawyer
for the attorney general’s office, countered that Eric Trump’s lawyers were
seeking a delay “simply on the grounds of personal inconvenience to the
witness” rather than any legal grounds. He argued that courts have found a
compliance deadline of just five days is reasonable.
Eric Trump’s lawyers had
proposed four dates for him to testify, the earliest being Nov. 19. They argued
that would’ve been just after James’ office finished interviewing other
witnesses in the investigation. Eric Trump switched lawyers in mid-July, Futerfas
said, contributing to the need for a delay.
Eric Trump did not
participate in Wednesday’s hearing, which was held via Skype. Eric, the third
of Trump’s five children, was scheduled to appear Wednesday at a campaign event
in Glendale, Arizona, called “Evangelicals for Trump: Praise, Prayer, and
Patriotism.”
James sought judicial
intervention to compel Eric Trump and other business associates to testify and
turn over documents as part of an investigation into whether the family’s company lied about the value of assets including a
suburban New York City estate.
Eric Trump will now have to testify under oath before the New York
Attorney General's office by Oct. 7 at the
latest.
AP wires were used in this report