New York’s Court of Appeals has dismissed a last-ditch effort by Donald Trump to avoid testifying in NY State Attorney General Letitia James’ civil probe into the former US president’s business practices, especially those pertaining to the Trump Organization.
In a statement that paves the way for Trump's deposition next month, the court said there was no “substantial constitutional question” that would warrant its intervention in the matter.
The court also rejected last week’s motion by Trump’s lawyers to stay the subpoenas for him and his two adult children to testify in the James probe, saying that doing so would be “academic” because it wasn't taking up the ex-president's appeal in the first place.
The move followed Trump and his two eldest children, Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr., agreeing last week to answer questions under oath starting 15 July unless the Court of Appeals first rules in their favour that they do not have to be deposed.
This came after the appellate division of the New York state's trial court ruled on 26 May that the Trumps had to undergo a deposition, upholding a lower court's ruling that James' office had "the clear right" to question the 45th US president and certain other figures in the Trump Organization.
In early July 2021, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office charged Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg with second-degree grand larceny, and the company itself with "the crime of scheme to defraud in the first degree".
The indictment marked the first criminal charges against the former US president's company since prosecutors started investigating it more than three years ago.
James' office opened a civil probe into the Trump Organisation in March 2019, looking into whether the company improperly inflated the value of its assets in financial records. The office also issued subpoenas to local governments seeking documents on several Trump Organization properties in Manhattan, upstate New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
The Trumps have been fighting for months to avoid having to testify in the investigation, which has repeatedly been described by the 45th president as a witch hunt.