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Live Updates: Trump Takes the Fifth Amendment in New York Deposition

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Trump declines to answer questions in New York deposition, invoking his right against self-incrimination.
Donald J. Trump declined to answer questions from the New York state attorney general’s office on Wednesday, a surprising gamble in a high-stakes legal interview that likely will determine the course of a civil investigation into his company’s business practices.
Shortly after questioning began on Wednesday morning, Mr. Trump’s office released a statement saying he would invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, explaining that he “declined to answer the questions under the rights and privileges afforded to every citizen under the United States Constitution.”
Mr. Trump answered only one question, about his name, toward the beginning of the interview, one of his lawyers, Ronald P. Fischetti, said. Then he read a statement accusing the attorney general, Letitia James, who sat across from him, of having “openly campaigned on a policy of destroying me.” Ms. James did not visibly react.
After that, Mr. Trump repeated the words “same answer” from about 9:30 a.m. to around 3 p.m., with several breaks, as Ms. James asked questions about the Trump Organization.
Since March 2019, Attorney General Letitia James’s office has investigated whether Mr. Trump and his company improperly inflated the value of his hotels, golf clubs and other assets. Mr. Trump has long dismissed the inquiry from Ms. James, a Democrat, as a partisan “witch hunt.”
In his statement on Wednesday, he cast it as part of a grander conspiracy against him, linking it to the F.B.I. search at Mar-a-Lago, his home and private club in Palm Beach, Fla., on Monday.
“I once asked, ‘If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?’” he said in the statement. “Now I know the answer to that question.” He said that he was being targeted by lawyers, prosecutors and the news media, and that left him with “no choice.”
But there are other reasons Mr. Trump may have decided not to answer questions. While Ms. James’s inquiry is civil, and she cannot file criminal charges against the former president, the Manhattan district attorney’s office has been conducting a parallel criminal investigation into whether Mr. Trump fraudulently inflated valuations of his properties. Any misstep from the former president in his deposition could have breathed new life into that inquiry.
Mr. Trump had not been expected to invoke his constitutional right against self-incrimination. He has long considered himself his best spokesman, and those who had questioned him in the past, as well as some of his own advisers, believed he was unlikely to stay quiet.
His decision could have a significant impact on any trial if Ms. James’s investigation leads to a lawsuit. Jurors in civil matters can draw a negative inference when a defendant invokes his or her Fifth Amendment privilege, unlike in criminal cases, where exercising the right against self-incrimination cannot be held against the defendant.
In the past, Mr. Trump has ridiculed witnesses for invoking their Fifth Amendment rights, once remarking at a rally that, “You see the mob takes the Fifth,” and, “If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?”
His decision to decline to answer questions throughout the day —means he did not unwittingly aid the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation, which was nearing an indictment of the former president this year before losing momentum.
The district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, had developed concerns about proving a case against Mr. Trump, but he has said that he is monitoring Ms. James’s investigation and planned to scrutinize Mr. Trump’s responses on Wednesday. The former president’s decision not to answer those questions may forestall new avenues in that investigation.
Mr. Trump is also contending with a litany of other inquiries. Along with the F.B.I. search at Mar-a-Lago, federal prosecutors are questioning witnesses about his involvement in efforts to reverse his election loss; a House select committee held a series of hearings tying him more closely to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol; and a district attorney in Georgia is investigating potential election interference on the part of Mr. Trump and his allies.
Ms. James’s inquiry could wrap up sooner than those investigations. Rather than file a lawsuit that would take years to resolve, she could first pursue settlement negotiations with the former president’s lawyers to obtain a swifter financial payout. But if she ultimately sues Mr. Trump — and if Ms. James prevails at trial — a judge could impose steep financial penalties on Mr. Trump and restrict his business operations in New York.
The depositions represent the culmination of months of legal wrangling. In January, Mr. Trump asked a judge in New York to strike down a subpoena from Ms. James seeking his testimony and personal documents. The judge, Arthur F. Engoron, sided with Ms. James and ordered the Trumps to testify, a ruling that an appellate court upheld.What happens next in the New York attorney general’s inquiry?
Former President Donald J. Trump’s decision to invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination leaves the New York attorney general, Letitia James, with a crucial decision: whether to sue Mr. Trump or to seek a settlement that could extract a significant financial penalty.
While Mr. Trump’s silence might have been the safest route for him, it could strengthen Ms. James’s hand in the weeks to come, whatever her next move.
If Ms. James, a Democrat, files a lawsuit against him, Mr. Trump’s decision to keep quiet could be held against him at trial. In some civil cases, jurors are instructed that they can take into account a defendant’s decision to invoke the Fifth Amendment in weighing the facts. They may infer, for instance, that the defendant is hiding something, a legal concept known as a “negative or adverse inference.” In criminal cases, however, jurors are told that exercising the right against self-incrimination cannot be held against the defendant.
And if Ms. James prevails at a civil trial, a judge could impose steep financial penalties on Mr. Trump and restrict his business operations in New York.
With that threat in hand, Ms. James’s lawyers could use Mr. Trump’s refusal to answer questions as leverage in settlement talks.
Ms. James would most likely seek a settlement that includes some financial penalty for Mr. Trump and that possibly forces his company to adopt changes to the ways it operates. And a settlement agreement would very likely accuse Mr. Trump and his company of significant wrongdoing, including the fraudulent inflation of the value of his golf clubs, hotels and other properties on the financial statements he provided to banks in hopes of obtaining loans.
Ms. James revealed in a court filing this year that Mr. Trump’s longtime accounting firm, which compiled those statements, had cut ties with him. The firm, Mazars, essentially retracted nearly a decade’s worth of Mr. Trump’s financial statements.
In seeking to fend off a lawsuit from Ms. James, Mr. Trump’s lawyers are most likely to argue that valuing real estate is a subjective process and that his company simply estimated the value of his properties, without intending to artificially inflate it.
While Ms. James has contended in court papers that the Trump Organization provided bogus valuations to banks, Mr. Trump’s lawyers may argue that those banks were sophisticated financial institutions capable of evaluating the properties on their own, and that they turned a hefty profit from their dealings with Mr. Trump.
And while Mr. Trump’s decision not to answer questions may complicate his defense, there are numerous legal reasons for him to have done so.
Most immediately, Mr. Trump could have unintentionally aided the attorney general’s case against him by providing substantive answers. He also could have unwittingly aided the parallel criminal investigation into similar conduct being conducted by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. The district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, had said he would monitor the interview closely.
And if the attorney general finds that any of Mr. Trump’s responses contradicted evidence from her inquiry, the inconsistencies could prompt a separate perjury investigation.
Finally, while jurors in civil trials can in many cases take a defendant’s refusal to answer questions into account, they are not automatically granted the right to do so. Whether jurors might draw a negative inference is subject to litigation and could cause delays.Can Trump take the Fifth in a civil case?
The Fifth Amendment established a bedrock protection against self-incrimination — in criminal cases. It says that no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.”
The protection, Justice Arthur J. Goldberg wrote for the Supreme Court in 1964, “reflects many of our fundamental values and most noble aspirations.” Among them, he wrote, were “our unwillingness to subject those suspected of crime to the cruel trilemma of self-accusation, perjury or contempt” and “our fear that self-incriminating statements will be elicited by inhumane treatment and abuses.”
In invoking his Fifth Amendment rights on Wednesday, former President Donald J. Trump gave a different reason: “When your family, your company and all the people in your orbit have become the targets of an unfounded, politically motivated witch hunt supported by lawyers, prosecutors and the fake news media, you have no choice.”
He did so in the context of a deposition in a civil inquiry into his business practices — not a criminal prosecution — by New York’s attorney general, Letitia James.
But the Supreme Court has said that the setting does not affect the availability of the privilege, so long as there is a threat of criminal liability.
“The privilege is not ordinarily dependent upon the nature of the proceeding in which the testimony is sought or is to be used,” Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote for the court in 1924. “It applies alike to civil and criminal proceedings, wherever the answer might tend to subject to criminal responsibility him who gives it.”
Given various criminal investigations, including one by Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, which he has said remains pending, Mr. Trump’s move was probably justified and perhaps wise.
But it was not without risks. Prosecutors are forbidden from telling juries in criminal trials that a defendant’s decision not to testify is evidence of guilt. The rules are generally different in civil cases.
“The Fifth Amendment does not forbid adverse inferences against parties to civil actions when they refuse to testify” in response to evidence of wrongdoing, Justice Bryon R. White wrote for the court in 1976.
That means Mr. Trump may pay a price for his decision to invoke the Fifth Amendment in a civil case. He may also have limited his ability to offer related testimony, as courts do not allow selective or opportunistic waivers of the privilege.
“It is well established that a witness, in a single proceeding, may not testify voluntarily about a subject and then invoke the privilege against self-incrimination when questioned about the details,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the court in 1999.Trump has long used a strategy of portraying himself as the victim of persecution.
Former President Donald J. Trump, who for years has conflated legal issues with public-relations and political ones, is attempting to do the same around his decision to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights in a New York civil investigation related to his company.
In describing a decision that Mr. Trump said he took on the advice of his lawyers — which he has been known to flout at other times. During a deposition with Attorney General Letitia James of New York State on Wednesday morning, the former president maintained that he was the victim of an unfair campaign to destroy him and that was why he could not answer questions.
In reality, Mr. Trump’s decision in the deposition may have related to the ongoing criminal investigation by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, into his company and a top executive, Allen Weisselberg. His testimony in the civil case might have been used as evidence in the criminal investigation.
But Mr. Trump sought to portray the attorney general’s inquiry, as he has in legal cases for decades, as an effort to condemn him unfairly.
Tim O’Brien, author of the book “TrumpNation: The Art of Being The Donald,” said that Mr. Trump’s current behavior is rooted in a long tradition that began with his father, Fred C. Trump, in which “authorities and law enforcement” are “out to get him, and he is always the victim.”
Mr. Trump has portrayed long cast of characters this way, said Mr. O’Brien, whom Mr. Trump unsuccessfully sued for his book. Now, he’s doing so with the New York attorney general because “it’s legally useful to him to do so and two, he knows painting himself as the victim is powerful to people in his camp,” Mr. O’Brien said.
Mr. Trump invoked the Fifth Amendment two days after the F.B.I. searched his property, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Fla. The search has had a galvanizing effect within a Republican party, whose officials have strained to avoid commenting on the most egregious of the words and actions attributed to Mr. Trump during hearings by the House select committee investigating the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Republican officials who pride themselves on their support for law enforcement, or who have criticized Mr. Trump, have rallied to his side, even offering up cries to “defund” the F.B.I.
“It had better be a whole lot more than that or this will end up in history as a colossal mistake — perhaps leading to a second Trump term,” said David Kochel, a Republican strategist.Trump and James sat across from each other for hours as he said ‘same answer’ again and again.
The New York State attorney general, Letitia James, sat across from Donald J. Trump as he repeatedly declined to answer questions, invoking his right against self-incrimination during a deposition on Wednesday, according to one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers.
The lawyer, Ronald P. Fischetti, said that over the course of about four hours, with several breaks, Mr. Trump answered only one question, about his name, toward the beginning of the interview.
Then he read a statement into the record in which he called the inquiry a continuation of “the greatest witch hunt in the history of our country” and accused Ms. James of having “openly campaigned on a policy of destroying me.”
Ms. James did not visibly react, Mr. Fischetti said in an interview.
After that, Mr. Trump repeated the words “same answer” from about 9:30 a.m. to around 3 p.m., with a long break for lunch and several shorter breaks.
“They asked a lot of questions about valuations and golf clubs and all that stuff,” Mr. Fischetti said. He said that Mr. Trump did not diverge from that answer, offering the same response until the interview was over.
Ms. James read an introduction at the opening of the interview but left the questioning to one of her office’s lawyers, Kevin Wallace. A number of other lawyers from her office were present, and Mr. Fischetti said he was joined by another of Mr. Trump’s attorneys, Alina Habba.
The attorney general’s office had not been alerted in advance that Mr. Trump was going to take the fifth, Mr. Fischetti said, in part because the decision was made only shortly before the interview and Mr. Trump had to be persuaded not to answer the questions substantively.
“He absolutely wanted to testify, and it took some very strong persuasion by me and some others to convince him,” Mr. Fischetti said.
The statement that Mr. Trump read overlapped significantly with one that he released publicly earlier in the day, in which he linked his refusal to answer questions to the F.B.I.’s search of his home on Monday, casting the actions as part of a larger effort by his political opponents to discredit him. (The two investigations are not linked.)
“I once asked, ‘If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?’” he said in both statements. “Now I know the answer to that question.” He said that he was being targeted by lawyers, prosecutors and the news media, and that left him with “no choice.”‘If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?’ Trump’s position on declining to testify has changed over time.
Over the years, former President Donald J. Trump has generally criticized other politicians for taking the Fifth Amendment. But on Wednesday, he invoked the right himself during a deposition at the office of the New York attorney general, and it wasn’t the first time.
Mr. Trump previously contended that invoking one’s Fifth Amendment rights was virtually an admission of wrongdoing.
“So there are five people taking the Fifth Amendment, like you see on the mob, right? You see the mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” Mr. Trump said at a rally in Iowa in 2016, referring to investigations into Hillary Clinton’s handling of potentially classified material as secretary of state.
Soon after, at a presidential debate, Mr. Trump doubled down on criticizing Ms. Clinton for using a private email server as secretary of state, again referencing the Fifth Amendment.

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