Former US President Donald Trump answered questions from the New York attorney general for nearly seven hours in his second deposition in the $250 million New York civil suit against his holding company, accused of inflating the value of assets.
Trump has given up on invoking the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination. “He remains adamant in his position that he has nothing to hide and looks forward to briefing the attorney general on the immense success of his multibillion-dollar company,” said Alina Habba, one of his attorneys, before testifying.
The Attorney General has filed a civil lawsuit against Donald Trump and three of his sons, asking for compensation of 250 million dollars and asking them to be banned from running businesses. Letitia James accuses the Republican billionaire and her children of “stunning fraud” for having “deliberately” manipulated the valuations of the group’s assets to obtain more advantageous loans from banks or reduce its taxes.
Donald Trump has always refuted these irregularities. On his he Truth Social Network he called the case “ludicrous”, “like all the other cases of election interference I’ve been subjected to”.
But the former president sees court cases piling up on his way to the primary for the Republican nomination. In addition to last week’s indictment (the first for a former US president), Donald Trump also remains in the crosshairs of justice for his alleged involvement in the attempt to turn the results of the 2020 presidential elections in Georgia in his favor, and on his role in the storming of the Capitol by his supporters, on January 6, 2021.