072020_istock_kuzma-8

iStock/KuzmaBY: AARON KATERSKY, ABC News

(NEW YORK) — The New York Attorney General’s office sought Wednesday to compel testimony from President Donald Trump’s son as part of an investigation into whether the Trump Organization improperly inflated certain assets to obtain tax benefits it otherwise would not have been entitled to receive.

Eric Trump offered to sit for a deposition after Election Day, citing a busy travel schedule on behalf of the campaign.

Assistant Attorney General Matthew Colangelo told the judge Eric Trump should have no role in dictating the timing of his testimony.

“The mere ground of personal inconvenience isn’t a basis to delay compliance,” Colangelo said during a video hearing before Judge Arthur Engoron.

An attorney for Eric Trump, Alan Futerfas, said the delay resulted from a change in attorneys so the president’s son is represented by counsel separate from the company.

“There is a massive amount of material that is involved in this investigation,” Futerfas said. “We need time to go through these materials. We need time to prepare our client.”

Futerfas also reminded the judge about the election’s approach, adding: “Eric Trump is a vital and integral part of that, and he’s traveling just about seven days a week.”

During the same hearing, Colangelo said the Trump Organization was improperly withholding about four dozen records from investigators and he balked at the company’s claim the documents are protected by attorney-client privilege.

“There’s no evidence they relate to a legal purpose and in about 44 of them they were copied to a third party and the privilege is waived,” Colangelo said.

The Trump Organization insists it’s acted in good faith.

“We’ve been very cooperative with the attorney general throughout the investigation,” said Trump Organization attorney Lawrence Rosen.

Copyright © 2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes:

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>