It’s over now

| 1:09 am EDT August 11, 2022
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It’s worth underscoring that New York Attorney General Letitia James probably knew all along that Donald Trump would end up pleading the Fifth in response to every question, and yet she fought hard to successfully force him to to show up to his deposition anyway. And once he began pleading the Fifth to her questions, she surely knew that he would keep doing so throughout the rest of the testimony. Yet she made a point of asking him more than four hundred questions anyway, just to force him to plead the Fifth in response to each of them.

This isn’t merely about theatrics. In a criminal case, pleading the Fifth isn’t considered an indicator of guilt. But in a civil probe like the one that Letitia James is running, it matters in a legal sense when someone pleads the Fifth. Although he wanted no part of it, Donald Trump’s deposition was his opportunity to present a defense of his company’s business practices, or to present evidence that might paint its financial transactions in a more innocent light. James can take Trump’s refusal to address all these topics and use it as part of her conclusion that the Trump Organization is indeed a fraud.

Moreover, in a probe like this, the biggest fish or kingpin is nearly always interviewed dead last, after the entire rest of the probe is complete, because prosecutors want to already know everything there is to know before they take on the kingpin at deposition. So James’ probe is now complete. Notably, because Trump didn’t bother to make any claims that James might need to then go research and disprove, Trump passed up a final opportunity to stall her. Now it’s over.

We don’t know precisely what Letitia James will announce in terms of civil penalties. We don’t know when she’ll decide to make such an announcement; it could be today or it could be two weeks from now, depending on her calendar. Nor do we know whether she’ll pursue criminal charges alongside the civil penalties. But we do know that in his final opportunity to help himself in this probe, Trump did nothing at all. And now it’s all over except for the announcement, and the inevitable shouting.