Former President Donald Trump and two of his children asked a New York state appeals court to throw out a judge’s decision forcing them to testify in Attorney General Letitia James’ civil probe of their family real estate business.
Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump were ordered earlier this month to sit for depositions in James’ investigation into potentially fraudulent asset valuations at the Trump Organization. The judge rejected their argument that the attorney general’s subpoenas should be blocked because she was improperly trying to gather evidence for a separate criminal case being led by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
On Monday, they filed papers with an appellate panel in Manhattan seeking to overturn judge Arthur Engoron’s decision on the same grounds. The trio asked the appeals court to determine whether the attorney general, while participating in a criminal prosecution with an active grand jury, “violates the rights of those same targeted people” when it requires their testimony through an administrative subpoena.
The Trumps, who claim James’ probe is politically motivated, also asked the court to determine whether whether the attorney general’s office had engaged in “impermissible selective prosecution.”
James’ investigation, which began in 2019, was started after Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen handed Congress a trove of Trump financial records and testified that his former boss “inflated his total assets when it served his purposes” and “deflated his assets to reduce his real estate taxes.”
Bragg has charged the Trump Organization and its longtime CFO with tax fraud for allegedly compensating employees with unreported perks like housing and cars.
