Former President Donald Trump’s legal team purportedly leaned on the Secret Service as a cudgel in a failed bid to relocate the deposition of his hotly anticipated appearance before the New York Attorney General’s Office last month, though the agency disputed the Trump legal team’s account.
Lawyers for Trump said the agency harbored security concerns about transporting the former president to the attorney general’s office and pitched Trump Tower as a more suitable destination for his deposition instead, multiple sources told the Daily Beast.
TRUMP SAYS HE ‘DECLINED TO ANSWER’ QUESTIONS DURING NY AG DEPOSITION
But the request, which came through correspondence with the attorney general’s office, was disputed by Secret Service, which did not relay any such concerns to state investigators directly, the report noted. Furthermore, Trump’s legal team provided no official affirmation of safety concerns from the agency itself, according to the report.
“[Secret Service is] unaware of any security challenges at the Office of the New York State Attorney General,” Anthony Guglielmi, the chief of communications for the Secret Service, told the news outlet.
In the past, Trump has advocated that high-profile deals and legal wranglings be conducted on his own turf, giving him a home-field advantage of sorts, associates of the former president told the news outlet.
“It’s his comfort space. Trump believes that the second these investigators enter the building, which has his name on it … that he’s the one in charge,” former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen said, per the Daily Beast.
Ultimately, the gambit failed, and Trump underwent a deposition at New York Attorney General Letitia Jame’s office, where he repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination and refrained from answering an onslaught of questions.
James has been conducting a sprawling civil inquiry of the Trump family empire sparked by Cohen’s testimony before Congress that the Trump Organization frequently manipulated its asset valuations to increase its value when pursuing business deals and downgrade its value to reduce its tax bill.
Trump had long fought a subpoena for deposition in court but was ultimately unsuccessful and ordered to sit for a deposition. The Washington Examiner reached out to representatives for James, Trump, and the Secret Service for comment.
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Trump’s former associate Allen Weisselberg, the ex-chief financial officer at the Trump Organization, recently cut a plea deal with prosecutors at the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which is conducting a separate criminal inquiry into the Trump Organization.
In addition to weathering legal scrutiny in New York, Trump is also being examined by the Justice Department for his handling of classified information and is said to be a person of interest in lines of inquiry for the DOJ’s sweeping investigation of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. He is also a person of interest in the Fulton County investigation into whether 2020 election crimes were committed in Georgia.
