Judging Freedom - Trump Forced to Testify

Episode Date: May 26, 2022

New York appeals court rules Trump, Ivanka and Don Jr. must sit for depositions.#TrumpSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, May 26, 2022. It's about 2.40 in the afternoon here on the East Coast of the United States. About three hours ago, a panel of four appellate judges in the New York State Supreme Court ordered former President Donald Trump to sit down and give a deposition to the prosecutors who are investigating potential irregularities and even criminal events in the operation of his company, the Trump Organization. Now, let me give you some background on this. That's a mouthful. President Trump, before he was the president, was a fabulously successful and often controversial New York City developer who developed very high-end properties. He owned

thousands of individual corporations, but the umbrella entity, the entity that owned all of them and out of which he personally operated, was known as the Trump Organization. So if he borrowed money from a bank, and his favorite lender was Deutsche Bank, the large German bank with offices in New York, it was through the Trump Organization. When he bought insurance on his buildings, it was through the Trump Organization. When he paid real estate taxes on his buildings, it was through the Trump Organization. When he paid real estate taxes on his buildings, it was through the Trump Organization. The Attorney General of New York, Letitia James, who's the Chief Law Enforcement Officer of the state, but who does not have the authority to indict, she can only

investigate. An odd quirk of New York law, most state attorneys general have the authority to indict. Ms. James. It's not her fault. It's just the way the state constitution is written does not. She commenced an investigation on the basis of information that came to her, which was intended to show whether or not the Trump organization cheated, cheated on its taxes, lied to its insurance companies, and lied to the banks that were lending it money. In an effort to determine whether or not that was true, she subpoenaed documents from the Trump organization. She got some 900,000 pages of documents. The former president and his team, according to a judge, held back the most important documents, and supposedly those

most important documents are still being looked for. In the course of all of this, the Trump or the President of the United States himself, the former President, is under a criminal investigation in the state of Georgia for obstruction of justice or attempted obstruction of justice by attempting to cause Georgia officials in December and January of 2000 to find votes that didn't exist, to put in his column, to tip the scales of the state of Georgia, and thus its electoral votes to him rather than Joe Biden. It has nothing to do with the investigation in New York. There was a criminal investigation, not a civil suit as Letitia James is operating that I just

described, but a criminal investigation in New York about whether the Trump organization cheated on its taxes, lied to its lenders, lied to its insurance carriers, and the prosecutor split. Some of the prosecutors wanted to indict. The chief prosecutor said no, so that criminal investigation is over with. The president is also being investigated by the Department of Justice for two potential crimes, whether he was involved in what the government calls an insurrection, what a lot of people say was a legal political demonstration, whatever it was that happened in the Capitol on January 6th, and whether, I'm trying to remember what the other one was, oh, whether he knowingly, I'm sorry,

whether he knowingly removed from the White House top secret materials, which he could declassify and brought them to his own premises in Florida, having failed to declassify them. Trump was subpoenaed. Donald Trump personally was subpoenaed by Letitia Jones, James, to give testimony in a deposition. That's an examination before trial under oath in lawyers' offices and on videotape. He said, no, I'm not going to do it because I'm still subject of a criminal investigation. And the general rule of thumb is when there's a civil lawsuit

and a criminal investigation against the same person, the civil lawsuit waits until the criminal investigation is over, unless they're not related to each other. So is the investigation of voter fraud in Georgia related to tax fraud, insurance fraud, and bank fraud in New York? No. Is the investigation of the removal of classified materials from the White House to a personal private residence in Florida related to an investigation of insurance fraud, bank fraud, or tax fraud in New York? Answer, no. That. That at least was the ruling today. So the trial judge who ordered President Trump to testify was appealed, and today the appellate court unanimously said you will testify. So former President Trump has two choices. He can sit down for this testimony

and you'll be able to sell tickets for this videotape or he can appeal to the Court of Appeals of the State of New York, which in my view is a waste of his money and the time of his lawyers and is likely to produce the same result. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.