NEW YORK — Donald Trump will return to New York City on Thursday for his second homecoming in as many weeks to sit for another deposition in state Attorney General Letitia James’ sprawling financial fraud case, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to the New York Daily News on Tuesday.
The former president’s second sitdown with James in her $250 million fraud lawsuit against his family real estate business and its top executives comes after Trump recently appeared in a Manhattan courtroom to face a litany of felony business fraud charges.
It comes less than two weeks before he’s set to go on trial in a third matter in Manhattan Federal Court, where an anonymous jury will hear writer E. Jean Carroll’s case against him, alleging he raped her in 1995 and slandered her when she came forward.
The session will happen at James’ downtown Manhattan offices, where Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment right to stay silent more than 440 times during his first deposition in August.
James’ sweeping fraud lawsuit, filed in September after an expansive three-year probe, alleges that Trump and senior Trump Organization executives, including his children Ivanka, Eric and Don Jr., carried out rampant business fraud in New York’s real estate market from 2011 to 2021.
The AG says the company habitually misrepresented how much its assets like skyscrapers and golf courses were worth — by hundreds of millions — to receive drastically more favorable loans and tax breaks. Trump is accused of inflating his net worth by billions of dollars.
The case is one in a superstorm encircling Trump, 76, as he runs for the White House for a third time and carries some of the highest penalties. It seeks to bar the Trumps from ever running a business in New York again or buying commercial real estate in the Big Apple for five years.
Trump’s business is currently operating under a court-appointed monitor. Its decadeslong chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, a defendant in the suit, is finishing his jail term at Rikers Island after he and two Trump Organization entities were convicted of criminal tax fraud in December.
AG spokeswoman Delaney Kempner declined to comment. Trump’s lawyers did not respond to The Daily News’ inquiries.
Trump has repeatedly lashed out at James on social media — as he has with the authorities involved in his criminal case — and accused her of being racist against him because he is white. He has decried her case and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s as part of a deep state Democrat conspiracy and “witch hunt.”
Investigators from James’ office were involved in the Manhattan district attorney’s Trump criminal probe that led to his recent indictment.
He has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts in that case. The indictment accuses him of falsifying business records to cover up an illegal hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels ahead of his 2016 election as president, which violated state and federal election laws.
The charges are not prison-mandatory but carry a potential four-year term if Trump is convicted.
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