Former President Donald Trump is no stranger to being deposed.
Former President Donald Trump is no stranger to being deposed. Characteristic of most people in that situation who know to take the process seriously, when Trump has spoken under oath, he has often been more circumspect than the Trump we’ve come to know in public. At times, he has even been subdued.
That is very much not the case in the transcript of his sit-down with New York Attorney General Letitia James in April as part of her $250 million civil lawsuit against his company. Trump himself is named alongside the Trump Organization in the suit, which alleges that he wildly inflated the value of his properties to get favorable terms on loans from banks. Aside from the financial penalty, James is seeking to have the company shut down entirely in the state of New York.
Given the stakes, Trump should have been on his best behavior. But the 479-page document, which was unsealed Thursday, is Trump in rare form. He’s combative. He’s rambling. Gone is the canny, and even shrewd, person we’ve seen at other points.
The New York Times released a series of excerpts from the transcript Thursday morning that gave a taste of how unhinged the deposition was. They include an excerpt in which Trump declares — unprompted and within 15 minutes of the deposition’s beginning — that he had saved the world while president: “I was — I considered this the most important job in the world, saving millions of lives. I think you would have nuclear holocaust, if I didn’t deal with North Korea. I think you would have a nuclear war, if I weren’t elected. And I think you might have a nuclear war now, if you want to know the truth.”
But even that excerpt doesn’t do the full document justice. He rails against Forbes, which had recently pegged his net worth at only $2.5 billion, as having an agenda against him because it’s “owned by China.” When asked whether in 2014 he was the CEO or the president of the company he owns, he says, “I don’t know exactly.” He accuses the prosecutor questioning him of letting him ramble on in hope of making a mistake, comparing the prosecutor to TV defense lawyer Perry Mason.
