Trump and his 2 children will not sit for depositions in a civil investigation as they seek to appeal subpoenas, lawyer says

• Trump and his two children will not testify by March 10 in the NY AG's civil investigation as they were ordered to, his lawyer told Insider.
• The testimony will be delayed while Trump, Ivanka Trump, and Donald Trump Jr. appeal the deposition order.

Former President Donald Trump and two of his adult children, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr., will not testify in the New York attorney general's investigation into the Trump Organization in the next two weeks as originally ordered by a Manhattan judge, Insider has learned.

Instead, the Trumps' testimony will be delayed — possibly for months — while their lawyers appeal the judge's order, which was issued last week after a spirited online court hearing, according to legal and court sources.

"They are not going to testify by March 10," Trump lawyer Ron Fischetti said, referring to the deadline for compliance with the attorney general's subpoenas that was set last week by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron.

"I don't think anybody thought that they were going to testify by that date," Fischetti added.

He said that Trump's team is in the process of filing an appeal and asking for a stay, and said the granting of such delays is "routine."

The Trumps' notice of appeal, and their request for a stay of Engoron's compliance order, will be filed with the state's appellate division early next week, Fischetti told Insider.

The actual appeal could take months to file.

New York Attorney General Letitia James' subpoenas to the former president and his two eldest children are part of a wide-ranging civil investigation into whether there was rampant fraud within the Trump Organization.

In recent months, the probe has zeroed in on whether Trump or other executives at the company artifically inflated or deflated the value of assets for loan and tax purposes, respectively.

Getting the former president and his family members to sit for depositions has been a battle for James, who first subpoenaed Trump, Ivanka Trump, and Donald Trump Jr. to testify in her civil investigation nearly three months ago.

Family lawyers quickly filed cross motions to quash the subpoenas. Donald Trump scheduled his testimony for January 7 of this year, then cancelled.

In fighting the subpoenas, lawyers for the Trump family and the Trump Organization argued that James' investigation is a political fishing expedition and therefore invalid.

They said that Trump would only testify in front of a criminal grand jury, where he would automatically be granted immunity.

In the weeks that followed, James repeatedly tipped her hand in court filings demanding the Trumps indeed testify before her investigators.

She identified at least ten properties under the Trump Organization umbrella that her office is probing, including his family estate, Seven Springs, in New York's Westchester County, and his public golf club in Southern California.

Trump has won lucrative tax breaks by donating easements for the two properties to conservation groups. James alleged in filings that those tax breaks were based on grossly inflated assessments of the easements' worth.

Trump "may have obtained more than $5 million in federal tax benefits from misleading valuations of conservation easements" at the two properties, she said in a January 18 filing.

James' office also said last month that after reviewing Trump's statements of financial condition, investigators found that the documents repeatedly "misstated objective facts" including the size of his Trump Tower penthouse; overstated his liquidity; deviated from general accounting principles to reach property valuations; "failed to use fundamental techniques of valuation"; and did not disclose that some of those valuations were artificially inflated to help Trump's brand.

Trump's longtime accounting firm, Mazars USA, cut ties with him in light of those findings and its own internal investigation, and said that ten years of his financial statements "should no longer be relied upon."

Defense lawyers countered in arguments last week that the Trumps should not have to testify because the AG is also working with the Manhattan DA in joint criminal probes into the business. Any testimony in the AG's civil case could be shared with criminal investigators, they said.

But Engoron ultimately sided with James and ordered all three Trumps to sit for depositions, saying in a ruling last week that the defense's argument "overlooks the salient fact that they have an absolute right to refuse to answer questions that they claim may incriminate them."

"Indeed, respondent Eric Trump invoked the right against self-incrimination more than 500 times during his one-day deposition arising out of the instant proceeding," Engoron wrote in his ruling.

To date, Eric Trump, the executive vice president of his father's company, is the only Trump who has sat for a deposition with James' office.

He, too, fought hard against his subpoena, issued by James in May 2020.

Eric Trump's lawyers delayed his testimony over the course of six months and then cancelled a July testimony date only two days beforehand.

He later offered some creative excuses for still more delays.

At one point, he told the attorney general's office that he couldn't possibly take time out from helping his father's 2020 re-election campaign.

The same judge — Engoron — didn't buy it, and ordered Eric Trump be deposed by the first week of October, 2020.

But James' office has said that the younger Trump was less than forthcoming as a witness, saying he declined to answer even basic questions, including one about what his title was when he joined his father's company.

His response, according to the AG filing from last month, was, "For all the reasons provided in my answer, which are incorporated herein in its entirety, I decline to answer that question."