Per Bloomberg, Donald Trump and three of his adult children — including Donald Jr., Eric, and Ivanka — have agreed to sit for questioning for up to seven hours apiece amid a class-action lawsuit hinging on their years of public support for a particular multi-level marketing company. The questioning will be under oath.
As summarized by Bloomberg, those behind the case “say Trump falsely claimed he wasn’t being paid for the promotions and lied about his belief in the product and the risks involved.” The Trump-backed company in question is ACN Opportunity LLC. Others will also be questioned under oath. Hope Hicks, who worked at the Trump company before eventually joining up with Trump’s administration, and Rhona Graff, a longtime executive assistant to Trump, will also be questioned in connection to the lawsuit. Trump himself, meanwhile, has also agreed to turn over transcripts from depositions that he sat for amid past fraud-related litigation connected to Trump University (which wasn’t actually a university and is no longer functioning).
Interestingly, depositions in this new case will be handled by attorneys with the law firm Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP. Roberta Kaplan, that firm’s founder, also represents the former president’s niece, Mary Trump, in a case alleging fraud by Donald and his siblings, and Kaplan is also representing writer E. Jean Carroll in a defamation case targeting the ex-president over his response to Carroll revealing a sexual assault against her perpetrated by Trump in the 1990s. The revelations about the length of time for which the Trumps agreed to be questioned in the ACN Opportunity-related case came in a Friday letter to a judge. Donald’s side has previously attempted to get the case thrown out, but they failed in that effort.
Trump is, meanwhile, facing the threat of questioning in connection to an ongoing civil investigation into his business led by New York state Attorney General Letitia James. The state official’s probe hinges on the apparent deceptive presentation by the Trump company of valuations for its assets — those deceptive valuations would’ve been set to provide the company with essentially unearned financial benefits, such as tax breaks.
In May, a four-judge panel in the appellate division of New York’s trial court ruled Donald, Ivanka, and Donald Jr. must testify as part of James’s investigation. Trump’s side argued against the possibility of testimony for James because of the potential for info drawn from that process to be used in the separate criminal probe into Trump’s business that culminated in part in tax evasion-related charges against the company and executive Allen Weisselberg. Despite the criminal case, the New York appeals panel handling this matter concluded that the “existence of a criminal investigation does not preclude civil discovery of related facts, at which a party may exercise the privilege against self-incrimination,” as they put it.
