Trump Will Be Deposed Under Oath Next Week, and You Know What Happens When Trumps Are Under Oath

Since leaving office last January, Donald Trump has had his hands full trying and failing to overturn the 2020 election, blackballing Republicans who dared to hold him responsible for the Capitol attack, and crashing both weddings and memorial services, where he’s no doubt made both the newlyweds and the newly deceased uncomfortable. Another area that’s kept him quite busy? His ongoing legal woes, which are significant and could result in him being forced to turn over large sums of money, losing his business, and/or going to prison.

Obviously, the most significant legal matters facing the ex-president are the criminal probes, which are being conducted in Georgia, D.C., and New York. In New York, the Trump Organization and its longtime CFO, Allen Weisselberg, were charged with more than a dozen crimes in July—which they’ve both pleaded not guilty to—and recently, prosecutors have given Weisselberg many, many reasons to flip and cooperate against Trump. Elsewhere, Trump is the subject of numerous lawsuits, and in at least two cases, has been ordered to sit for depositions under oath, situations which tend not to bring out the best in people with whom he shares DNA.

Per CNN:

A New York judge has ordered former president Donald Trump to sit for a video deposition next week in a case involving an alleged assault during a 2015 demonstration outside of Trump Tower. State Supreme Court Judge Doris Gonzalez has ordered Trump to appear for the deposition on Monday morning at the Trump Organization headquarters in New York City, “or in the event of illness or emergency,” on another agreed upon date before the month’s end.

“After defendants spent years unsuccessfully fighting to keep Donald Trump from testifying under oath, we will be taking his testimony in this case on Monday. We look forward to presenting this case, including Mr. Trump’s video testimony, to the jury at his trial,” said Benjamin N. Dictor, a lawyer for the plaintiffs.… The litigation revolves around a 2015 lawsuit filed by a group self-described as “human rights activists of Mexican origin” who were protesting Trump’s rhetoric on immigration in front of Trump Tower in September of that year. The men allege that Trump’s then head of security, Keith Schiller, hit one of the protesters, Efrain Galicia, in the head after Galicia tried to stop Schiller from taking their large cardboard signs, which read, “Trump: Make America Racist Again.” The lawsuit alleges that when Galicia tried to hold onto one of the signs, Schiller ripped it away from him, tearing it to pieces.

While Trump was not present when the incident occurred, lawyers for the plaintiff want to question him to determine if he is responsible for his employees’ conduct. While we can’t say for sure if the former real estate developer instructed his security team to allegedly assault the plaintiffs, he’s obviously a huge fan of violence, having told supporters at a rally to “knock the crap out of” protesters, instructed police officers to let suspects’ heads knock against the side of their squad cars, and insisted that a violent insurrection that left five people dead was justified.

Trump’s lawyers did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

In addition to next week’s deposition, Trump has also been ordered by a separate judge to answer questions under oath by December 23, in the defamation suit brought against him by former Apprentice contestant Summer Zervos, who accused Trump of defaming her when he denied her allegations of sexual assault. According to Zervos, during a meeting to discuss a job, Trump thrust his genitals on her and groped her breast. As Trump declared during the infamous Access Hollywood tape, “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful women—I just start kissing them, it’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy.”

In related news, in December 2020 and February 2021, respectively, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. were deposed under oath by D.C.’s attorney general, and it certainly seemed as though they lied about their involvement in their father’s 2017 inauguration. So there’s probably at least a tiny possibility Trump will also fail to tell the truth.

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