Legal expert: any way Donald Trump and his family play this New York probe from here, they’re screwed
Back when New York Attorney General Letitia James began subpoenaing members of the Trump family to testify in the state’s civil probe into the Trump Organization, Palmer Report pointed out that it was a lose-lose proposition for the Trumps no matter how they played it. If they testify in defense of the Trump’s Organization’s financial schemes, they risk slipping up and incriminating themselves in New York’s parallel criminal case into Donald Trump and others. If they refuse to testify, the state can use that as a basis for concluding that the Trump Organization is indeed culpable, and begin seizing assets.
Now a legal expert who previously worked as a prosecutor in New York is offering a similar take. After Letitia James subpoenaed Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. yesterday, former SDNY Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Signorelli laid out how the Trump family has nothing but bad options:
The Trumps will have 3 bad choices when they are compelled to testify in @NewYorkStateAG case:
1 Testify truthfully & incriminate themselves
2 Testify falsely & face perjury charges
3 Take the 5th & then have an adverse inference of liability imposed@TishJames is not playing— Richard Signorelli 🌱🇺🇦 🌊 🇺🇸 🇨🇦 (@richsignorelli) January 4, 2022
As of now the Trumps are trying to fight these subpoenas in court. But we don’t expect them to win, nor do we expect it to drag out particularly long in court. As Signorelli laid out above, no matter which option they choose, they still lose.
The key to winning these kinds of battles is to set the stage such that your adversary ends up losing no matter which path they take. That appears to be what New York has done when it comes to the Trumps. It’s taken awhile for New York to set this particular stage. But at this point the stage is nothing but trap doors for Donald Trump and his family.
