Two days after his home in Mar-A-Lago was raided by the FBI, ostensibly in search of classified documents that belong to the National Archives, former President Donald Trump appeared before investigators for the New York Attorney General to answer questions about business practices of the Trump Organization, based in New York City.
According to Trump, he invoked his Fifth Amendment, the right to refuse to answer the questions, more than 400 times. He simply repeated, “Same answer as before” each time, answering only one question.
For years, Attorney General Letitia James has been trying to prove that Trump fraudulently inflated or deflated the value of his real estate properties to gain advantages in property taxes and loan terms. James, a Democrat, campaigned on taking down Trump and began her investigation shortly after being elected in 2019.
The deposition had been scheduled before the FBI raid on Mar-A-Lago. However, it had been postponed until after the Trump family buried and mourned the death of Trump’s former wife, Ivana, who died July 14.
““Under the advice of my counsel and for all of the above reasons, I declined to answer the questions under the rights and privileges afforded to every citizen under the United States Constitution,” Trump said in a statement after the deposition, which lasted at least four hours. Trump was in the Attorney General’s offices for about six hours altogether.
Before he went in for the desposition, he wrote a statement on Truth Social: “In New York City tonight. Seeing racist N.Y.S. Attorney General tomorrow, for a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in U.S. history! My great company, and myself, are being attacked from all sides. Banana Republic!” Attorney General James took part in the questioning, sources reported.
In a statement on Wednesday, Trump also said, “I once asked, ‘If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?’ Now I know the answer to that question. 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.”
Meanwhile, more leaders are speaking out about the Monday raid, when 40 or more FBI agents broke into Mar-A-Lago and occupied it for 9.5 hours. The FBI and Department of Justice have remained silent on the raid.
Regarding that raid for documents, Trump wrote, “At the end of his presidency, Barack Obama trucked 30 million pages of his administration’s records to Chicago, promising to digitize them and eventually put them online — a move that outraged historians. More than five years after Obama’s presidency ended, the National Archives webpage reveals that zero pages have been digitized and disclosed.”
