This week, the civil probe will take a new turn as former US President Donald Trump is scheduled to be questioned by the New York State attorney general's office. Trump fought for months to avoid giving the testimony, which could have an impact on how the investigation into the former president and his family's real estate company, the Trump Organization, turns out, according to The New York Times. Trump had taken numerous depositions over the years.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had earlier on Monday conducted a raid at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. Trump in a statement said, "My beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents."
Since March 2019, Letitia James, the attorney general, and her team have been investigating whether Trump and his business exaggerated the value of their clients' hotels, golf courses, and other properties. James claimed in a court document from early this year that the firm's business operations were "fraudulent or misleading," but she also stated that her agency needed to interrogate Trump and two of his adult children to find out who was in charge of that behaviour.
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Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. had recently undergone similar questioning before Trump's deposition. The New York Times stated that it will mark the conclusion of James' probe, which Trump has criticised as a politically driven witch hunt.
Trump turned over 15 cartons of documents to government record-keepers in January out of worry that he might have broken the Presidential Records Act. This comes after the most recent public hearing of the January 6 select committee revealed that US President Donald Trump decided not to act when a mob of his supporters invaded the Capitol.
The former president was asked why the FBI agents were at Mar-a-Lago, but trump declined to comment. He stated that the raid was uninvited and added "they even broke into my safe." He referred to the FBI raid as a "Witch Hunt" and declared that the US is living in troubling times, emphasising that the agency had taken possession of the "home of the 45th President of the United States."
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He described the occurrence as a "attack that could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries" and said, "Unfortunately, America has now become one of those countries, corrupt at a level rarely seen before."
The former president stated, "They even broke into my safe!" while expressing shock. Even further, he made a comparison between the episode and the Watergate Scandal. "What is the difference between this and Watergate, where operatives broke into the Democrat National Committee?"
In American political history, the Watergate scandal was one of the biggest scandals. It happened from 1972 and 1974, when US President Richard Nixon was in office, and it caused him to resign.
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(With inputs from ANI)
