Trumps move to quash subpoenas for their testimony in civil investigation

The Trumps moved late Monday to quash subpoenas from the New York attorney general's office to two of former U.S. President Donald Trump's children seeking their testimony as part of its civil investigation into whether the Trump Organization manipulated the values of its properties.

Lawyers for the former President, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, who were subpoenaed on December 1, asked a judge to quash subpoenas for their testimony, arguing New York Attorney General Letitia James is seeking to "circumvent the entire grand jury process." Allowing the testimony, they argued, would set a "dangerous precedent."

The Trump lawyers argued in the court filing that James is trying to leverage the civil investigation her office has been conducting since 2019 to aid a criminal investigation led by the Manhattan district attorney's office, known as DANY, that she joined earlier this year.

A deposition in the civil case, they wrote, "is effectively the same as a deposition by the DANY, but without providing the constitutional protections afforded every witness through the grand jury process." Witnesses called before a New York state grand jury are given transactional immunity for their testimony and can't be prosecuted unless they lie under oath. James, they argued, is trying to get around those rights by seeking the testimony in a civil case, which could then be used by criminal prosecutors. If they don't testify, in a civil case a jury can hold that against defendants or draw an adverse inference.

"This is a rather transparent gambit. By attempting to play both sides, Ms James is in a position to cherry pick her investigatory methods -- civil or criminal -- in a calculated manner to, for example, leverage a Fifth Amendment assertion and obtain an adverse inference" in the civil investigation, they wrote, adding that absent a criminal investigation, the Trumps "might well be inclined to testify."