Donald Trump to face questioning from New York State Attorney General's office

Agencies | Washington                                                                   

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Former US President Donald Trump will face questioning from the New York State Attorney General's office this week; a new turn into the civil investigation.

According to a New York Times report, the former US president sat for numerous depositions over the years, and fought for months to avoid the testimony, which could shape the outcome of the investigation into him and his family real estate business: the Trump Organization.

Earlier, on Monday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had raided Trump's Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida.

Trump in a statement said:

"My beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents."

Since March 2019, the Attorney General, Letitia James, and her lawyers, have been scrutinising whether Trump and his company fraudulently inflated the value of his hotels, golf clubs and other assets.

Early this year, James said, in a court filing, that the company's business practices were "fraudulent or misleading", but that her office needed to question Trump and two of his adult children to determine who was responsible.

The deposition of Trump will be followed up with the questioning of Ivanka Trump, as well as Donald Trump Jr, in the coming days. It will represent the final stage of James' investigation, which Trump has dismissed as a politically-motivated witch hunt, as per The New York Times.

In January, Trump handed over 15 boxes of materials to government record-keepers, amid concern that he may have violated the Presidential Records Act.

This comes in the wake of the January 6 House Committee's latest public hearing, which said that the then US President Donald Trump had chosen not to intervene, as a mob of his supporters attacked the Capitol.

However, the former president declined to say why the FBI agents were at Mar-a-Lago. He confirmed that the raid was unannounced, and added they "even broke into my safe".

"Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before. After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate. It is prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don't want me to run for President in 2024, especially based on recent polls, and who will likewise do anything to stop Republicans and Conservatives in the upcoming Midterm Elections," Trump added.

He termed the incident an "assault that could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries" and noted that America had now "become one of those countries, corrupt at a level not seen before".

He even went ahead and compared the incident with Watergate Scandal.

"What is the difference between this and Watergate, where operatives broke into the Democrat National Committee?"

The Watergate scandal was a major political scandal in US history, that occurred during the administration of President Richard Nixon from 1972 to 1974, and eventually led to his resignation.