Revelations in Trump Deposition

scheduled for trial in April. In the meantime, Trump sworn testimony was taken on October nineteenth that Mara Lago and parts of that deposition have been unsealed, joining me as Bloomberg Legal reporter Eric Larson. So, Eric, why did the judge unseal the deposition? Well, this was just an excerpt of the deposition that was actually on steel and there was it was unstealed by the judge because it was included.

This portion of it was included in one of A. Gene Carroll's filings and the defamation and battery case that she filed against him. She was trying to argue that you know, they didn't really need more discovery in this case because Trump had already been questioned extensively about the alleged rapes that occurred and the defamation. So they're arguing

that they need to wrap up discovery move on. And their their evidence for this was to say, hey, look at all this, all these questions that Trump already answered, and they argued that that needed to be made public under New York's rules. What struck me most about the excerpt is that Trump didn't hold back at all in the deposition. It seemed like he did everything that a lawyer would tell a client not to do. Yeah, it

was definitely classic, you know Trump. It was kind of what you might expect him to sound like under oath in a case like this. You know, she didn't hold back and saying, for example, that he was not attracted to ee Gene Carol and and sort of trying to defend his statement as a usedly defamatory statement by the way,

that she was not his type. And that's an argument that he made early on in two thousand nineteen, when he was trying to explain that he did not rape her um and claimed that he had never even met her, in no contact with her whatsoever, um, And he thought that it would be a good idea to say that she wasn't his type, to sort of bolster that argument. Um. And that has been one of several statements that Trump made that has been in the sort of the center

of this defamation case. And he was asked about that sort of extensively in this deposition and explained in every which way he could that he was not in any way possibly attracted her and never could be. He called the suit itself a big fat hoax. And that's a word we've been hearing from him for many, many years. And Carol's lawyer called him on that. Yes, you know, she wanted to, I think make the points that Mr Trump sort of calls a lot of things hoaxes that

in fact are real. So, for example, she asked him to explain, you know, why why he used the word hopes so often, and he sort of went into a long answer saying Russia, Russia, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, saying it was all a hope, um, the impeachment hoax, you know, Obama spying on his campaign hopes, all these hoaxes and eating Carroll's lawyer said, you know what about climate change, You said, that's a hoax, And he said, yes, that is a hoax for the most part, and went on

to say how the environmental movement was a hoax, and so you know, made made a lot a lot of comments like that that she sort of wanted to illustrate. Well, maybe when you say hoax, maybe it's not actually a hope. But you know, his transcripts or speaks for itself. There was his lawyer there to caution him or give him advice.

His lawyer was there. Lenahaba was there. She objected, you know here there too, some of the questions that were asked with a way they were asked, But there wasn't any indication on the transcript that she was interrupting her client to get him to say or not saying anything. So um, he was definitely very very un filtered. You know, that's whether or not a jury would make anything of this.

You know, who knows. I mean, just because Trump has called a lot of things hoaxes doesn't automatically mean that eg and kills cases. It's true, and it's just something that the jury will take into accounts when they're weighing these allegations in the defense, so as far as the alleged attack, which he denies. He was also asked, have you ever kissed a woman without her consent? And he got aggravated with the attorney at that point. Yeah. It's hard to tell exactly what his tone was, but he did.

He said that he, uh, you know, he kind of thought about it for a Minute's like, I don't think I've had any complaints about that, except maybe from your client who is a liar or something to that effect. You know. Then Kills lawyer asked him as well, you know, do you know what sexual harassment means? Um, And his response was yeah, pretty much. That's actually where that particular excerpt of the transcript cut off. But yeah, he he

was asked a lot of details about his behavior with women. Um. He denied it, except to say that anyone who claims otherwise is lying. And it's worth noting that in this case, Kills lawyers have already deposed two women who previously accused Trump of sexual assault to sort of bolster their argument that Mr Trump has this pattern of behavior. So we haven't seen those depositions yet, but I'm sure that they

will be used if the case goes to trial. Even when he seems to get caught in apparent inconsistency, he tries to go around it, which is something we've seen before. He ended up calling Carol's publisher radical left leaning. Yeah,

he did. You know, Kill's lawyer as him about some of his remarks that he had made publicly that were in the case, you know, accusing Carroll of making these false allegations to try to sell a book that she had written into that of the nineteen and he had made some comments about her publisher being radical and left leaning.

He was asked about that, and it was pointed out to him that the publisher, HarperCollins Um, actually published his son in law, Jared Kushner's book Um, and Trump's response was, well, it could be that they published from very bad ones too, So he was sort of called out on an inconsistency there and just sort of brushed it off. I know that Eegene, Carol said she saved the dress from the alleged encounter, and they want to do a DNA test

on it. Has that test been done well? Actually, I think that they were doing a DNA test and had found some some samples of human DNA, whether it's hair or things like that, and just wanted to try to get actually a swab of Trump's you know, cheek or something like that inside of his cheek to get a DNA test to compare it to. My understanding is that has not happened, and that it may not happen. I believe at one point Ms Carroll's lawyer had said that she was sort of willing to drop that just to

get things moving along. And frankly, I do think that she has said she she believes she has such a strong case without it that she does not, um, you know, need it. But I do not believe that that test has ever been done. Wow, that that is a surprise. There's a question of whether this suit can even go forward because he claims he made the remarks in the

course of his duty as president. So tell us about DC's highest court hearing that, right, Yeah, So we're waiting for a decision from the highest local court in DC, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, which is basically looking at this a narrow sort of employment law question, um, before this case can move forward in federal court in New York. So there's a federal law called the west Ball Act that protects all government employees from civil suits

related to their jobs. So Trump is arguing, and in fact, the d o J backs his argument here that his denial of miss Kell's claims in two thousand nineteen qualified as a president Joel duty that he was actually just responding to reporter's questions about her allegations, and that was it that he needed to maintain Americans faith in the White House, and that denying these allegations was just part

of doing that. Ms Carroll argued that Mr Trump was just looking out for himself, that the things that he accused her of fabricating the attack, trying to sell a book, sort of conspiring with Democrats to politically hurt him, and claiming falsely that she had accused the other men of similar things. All these claims, she said, that goes too far. You were defaming me. That's not part of your job.

But the DC Local Court, the DC Court of Appeals, will decide on this narrow issue of whether those statements that Trump made qualified as part of his job under local employment law, and if they rule against him, then the case will be allowed to move forward to trial in April and federal court in Manhattan. If they rule in favor of Trump, then the case essentially ends here because of that federal law. But surprise, surprise, Trump has

heated his claims on truth social after he left the presidency. Yes, now that's definitely a bit more problematic here for the president because Miss Carroll is, I think a lot of people have heard, just a few months ago, filed a new lawsuit against Mr Trump accusing him of battery essentially the rape allegation under a new New York law that has temporarily lifted the statutes of limitations on these historical

assault claims for one year. So she's one of many women who are filing battery or rape or sexual assault lawsuits against people. Trump was one of the first people sued under that law. So we still have that civil lawsuit accusing him a battery, and that lawsuit includes a new claim of defamation over that truth social statement. So even if he's able to avoid this earlier lawsuit because he was president at the time, he'll still have this

other lawsuit moving forward. And if in fact both cases moved forward, Miss Carroll is trying to combine them for a joint trial, so that will all be her together. Trump tried to have that suit under the New York Sexual Assault Law dismissed. What were his claims? What was his reasoning? So? Mr Trump argued that the battery lawsuit filed under the New York Adult Survivor's Act violated his constitutional rights under the New York State Constitution by depriving

him of his due process right, essentially making it. You know, he's being accused of claims that are too difficult to refute because of their old claims, the witnesses, the evidence, everything is so outdated, Um, according to him, And you know, this is an argument we can probably expect to see a lot in a lot of these cases that have been filed under the Adult Survivor's Act. Just so happens that his is one of the first. But in this case, the judge denied the motion to dismiss um and has

allowed the case to move forward. The judge said that he Mr Trump could not question, um, you know what the legislature's and tensions were when they passed this law.

Umpuld argued that they hadn't pointed to a specific injustice to justify lifting the statute of limitations and the and the judge disagreed that that was not true, and he used pretty harsh words actually, um to get an indication of what the justice system or the judicial system might think of of lawsuits challenging or claims challenging this law. This particular judge said that it was lawfully passed and

that the arguments against it were pretty weak. I'm wondering if Trump is going to argue that this it will interfere with his campaign and should be done after the election. I don't think that that is probably going to work out, just based on what some of these these judges have been saying. The first defamation case on nineteen that is already set to go to trial in April, I think April eleventh, and that has already been set and is

sort of written in stone. Whether or not there later the battery cases combined with it, that might mean that it needs to be delay eight or maybe it'll happen

in April. But you know, he's already Trump and his grievous adult children and his company are also going to trial in October, and the New York Attorney General's fraud case against the company, and then in early there's another trial some investors who sued Trump and his his kids and his company for fraud over a multilevel marketing company

that they've promoted on The Celebrity Apprentice. That's another sort of big trial that's going to happen in early So these judges are setting these these trials knowing that Trump is running for president again and with the idea that they can be wrapped up before he really has the campaign. But of course that's just sort of a tip of the iceberg for some of his legal troubles as that happens. Yeah,

I'm so curious. I'd love to know how many lawyers he's employing at once to fight all these civil lawsuits and the possible criminal cases. It must be quite a few. Okay, I want to change topics now to another case. You've and writing about Huncle con Win and come Real Farms, but don't know where on Hennon. That's former tech entrepreneur Heather Morgan, a rapper who dubbed herself on social media and in music videos as the Crocodile of Wall Street.

She's also an accused cryptocurrency thief facing trial with her husband. They're accused of trying to launder four point five billion dollars of bitcoin stolen from the bitf Next currency exchange, and despite being under house arrest, she's got a new job at a tech company and a dispensation from the judge and the government to commute to it. Eric tell

us a little about Morgan. Heather Morgan and her husband Sein were arrested last February and charged with money laundering scheme involving four and a half billion dollars of bitcoin at least that was the value of it then stolen from the bits and Next currency exchange. So they've denied wrongdoing. You've been under house arrest and miss Morgan, you know,

as you mentioned, she filed herself as a rapper. She's a former tech entrepreneur, but she used the rapper name Razzlecan, and you know, went a little bit viral on social media, that's sort of thing, and with some of the videos that she would make and what she called herself the crocodile of Wall streets. So she has been under twenty fur home confinement for quite a while now, and some of their hearings are frequently delayed because they seem to

be in some sort of potential plea deals. The government has said they're trying to resolve the case without a trial. She and her husband are facing something like twenty years

in prison. So what happened? Her lawyer filed a letter with the magistrate judge in Federal Court in Washington asking to have the terms of her confinement modified so that she can leave on Monday's, Wednesdays and Fridays to go to New York City and work at the offices of her new employer, which was not named in the document, but she said that she would be a working in a role as a growth marketing and business development specialists, and they asked to keep the name of the employer's

secret because of harassment that she had received on social media as a result of intense media coverage of the case. So we don't know what company this is. We really

don't know anything other than that. But the government notably did not object to this, and the judge granted the requests the same day, and really surprised the government didn't object to this because they previously said that the couple had highly troubling overseas ties and fraudulent identities, as well as access to hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency. And when they were arrested, the government initially asked the judge not to allow them to be released on bail

because they were a flight risk. Correct. And also the government has said as recently as November, I believe that the case, as they continue to prepare for trial, regardless of whatever PLA talks may be happening, that the case is going to involve potentially very sent It is national security evidence, so they had to get a special order to only show the defense, you know, a summary of some of their evidence because it was too sensitive and

classified to show to someone who didn't have that clearance. So there's a national security angle to this case too, which makes it even more interesting. But I feel like one way or another, we're eventually going to get some more information that maybe makes some of this makes sense. But yeah, the government does not seem to have a problem with this particular defendant charged in a serious crime going to work for a technology company and going into

the city to be there in person. Maybe we'll learn more at the status conference set for next Friday, unless they delay that as well. Thanks so much, Eric, that's Bloomberg Legal reporter Eric Larson. It's a case with a legal economic and political ramifications, and it will be up to the Supreme Court to decide whether the United States can bring criminal charges against Turk state owned halk Bank over allegations that helped Ran to evade economic sanctions by

laundering billions in oil and gas revenues. I think it's pretty bizarre for this court to tell the President of the United States, as a matter of his national security exercise, that even though the Constitution doesn't prohibit what you're doing, even though a statute doesn't prohibit what you're doing, this Court is going to prohibit your exercise of national security authority.

That talk about big steps, it is that's huge. Other justices were concerned about whether allowing the federal prosecution to proceed might open the door to US states targeting foreign nations as well. Here are Justices Neil Gorsch and Sonya So to mayor, then states would be free to try to bring lawsuits against Mexico for this or that, or perhaps China because of COVID or Who knows what a creative state prosecutor might come up with. I don't know how um I would want to leave to the vagrancies

of individual prosecutors. Whether it's federal or state the right to insult another nation by giving them this unbridled power to initiate suits joining me is constitutional law expert Harold Crant, a professor at the Chicago Kent College of Law. I'll explain the main issue here these two is whether they're either state or federal courts. In this case, of federal court can try a instrumentality of a foreign government for

criminal offense. And on the First Crimes Act that we enacted after our nation was instituted, we had the courtet cognizance of all offenses against the United States, and so that would seem to suggest that foreign powers foreign corporations were included within that jurisdiction prevision. But at international common law, federal instrumentalities and federal states were rarely included in those

kinds of criminal cases. So the question is whether that original granted jurisdiction or subsequently under the Foreign severn the Immunity Act, has Congress decided either yes or no to allow criminal prosecutions against foreign entities or foreign states. All Banks attorneys said, the world has been around for like seven thousand years and no country has ever tried another country.

But hasn't the US sued foreign owned corporations. They have, There have been several proceedings, but there haven't been many and or all argument. It was clear that there was only a handful that could be counted really two or forty years of our nation's history. There was a discussion of several examples where the US had brought criminal prosecution against foreignown entities, principally of Chinese and state owned enterprises.

There are many places in the world where such prosecutions are not from the IT and there is sort of a common law notion that foreign entities and closely held foreign corporations should not be subject to criminal suits. Now, foreign officers of those corporations can be subject to criminal suits, but not the corporations themselves. Back the common law the rule.

In this case, both President Trump and President Biden decided not to go against individual officers of Health Bank the Turkish Bank, instead to go after the bank itself, because it was important to set a standard and to prosecute the Turkish Bank itself for its efforts to help circumvent the stations against Iran. One of the concerns, probably an obvious concern of the justices was usurping the power of the president to make national security decisions. It there was

an anomaly that was discussed at or larguments. On the one hand, shouldn't be administrations of Trump and Biden, no best, what's in the foreign diplomatic interests of the United States? And why should it be to the course to decide

that such prosecutions are not contemplated by Congress. On the other hand, if the position of the its government is to be followed, that would allow prosecutions of foreign owned entities in state court, and that would be a cummersome embarrassment that state prosecutors could initiate charges and that the federal government could not easily intervene to stop those prosecutions

and wouldn't get disrupt diplomatic relations. Justice Elena Kagan asked about news reports that came out about the Trump administration at one point allegedly pressuring the Southern District to drop the case. Is there a question here about the power of the executive branch to quash cases that affect international

relations or was that just one point she made? There was a lot of discussions or oral argument about what steps president could take if a U S Attorney in some district went ahead with a prosecution that would embarrass the diplomatic efforts of the government and the Representative Social General's office with a little kg in history answer those questions saying that there was informal mechanisms, there's discussion, there's always good faith, but he could point to no concrete

way that the President could stop a U. S. Attorney from bringing such a suit other than possibly a public threat to fire the U. S. Attorney for taking steps against the interests of the United States. And which way

do you think the statutory interpretation leads. There's a very complicated satutory interpretations questions, because at the first point, the seventeen Statutes seems to have no limitation all in terms of prosecutions of foreign loan entities, and the Foreign stron Communities Act seems to talk only about civil actions and not really about criminal actions at all. So much of the time the oral argument was just trying to figure out what to do about these open ended satutory terms

that didn't seem quite to fit together. But in terms of the policy concerns, the twin acts I think of concern were one is why should the courts be stepping in and saying this is a bad idea to allow prosecutions of foreign own entities when it's really in the control of the executive branch, which is the expert in diplomacy.

But on the other hand, because of the absence of a congressional admonition to states not to bring prosecutions against foreign own entities or whether it's suit to be done about that, and I think at the end of the day, there's no good answer to those problems. Congress hasn't done a great job here. Cons clearly did not focus on the issue, and so the court is going to come

up with some kind of coalition. I think that might send this case back to the Second Circuit to try one more time to figure out what to do with this bank, or at least to make a more clear definition of what kind of state owned enterprises could be prosecuted and what kind cannot, and what nexus of their activities to the jurisdiction United States is required before the

prosecution can perceive. One possibility for a reman would be for the Second circu It to determine whether any kind of international common law norm against criminal prosecutions of foreign entities can be led into the seventeen statute. Isn't that just kicking the can down the road, because after the second circuit makes another determination, it's going to come right back to the Supreme Court. It might this case might

not be done. But the difficulty concertain which way. Various members of the courts were leading stuff that they were all troubled and they were not particularly satisfied with responses from either of the advocates today, and it's a difficult issue because Congress has not been clear, so I'm not

sure that there's going to be an easy resolution. The easiest revolution would be for the Court to say either falt prosecutions are permitted under the SEV Statute, or they might say that the Foreign Sovereignties Immunity Act in the seventies has more clearly limited those kinds of cases and only will allow civil cases to be brought against for enterprises, which would leave the administration with the only possible response would be to go after members of the bank individually

and press criminal charges against them. Answering this requires a complex analysis tell us about it. So the first step is whether the statute applies to foreign states as well as to foreign owned entities, or whether it's sort of a common law immunity principles should be read into it. That's the first step, and the second step is, no matter how you come out on the first step, did the Foreign Sovereigners Immunity Act change that at all? Because

did it address the criminal context? And again the parties disagree. Then the third step is, even if you think that the Foreign sobealn Immunity Act applies, then did it still allow for this criminal exception with respect to with the commercial activities? And therefore you can continue with the criminal prosecution as long as you can show that the foreign actor was engaged in commercial activities that had a sufficient

nexus to United States. The corporate court manufacture on those issues because some may think that the SEV Statute controls US, Others may think that the Foreign sovereignt Immuniact change what the import of the statute was, and others may think that even if the SEV Statute has been changed by the Foreign Sovereignty the Act, that the commercial exception in the Foreign Sovereignties Comuni Act may control as a second circuit in fact held, which would then lead to the

possibility of the prostitution going forward. As the Roberts courts been careful about intervening in cases involving foreign affairs. The probign Courts has decided a number of cases with respect to foreign affairs that really shy about that kind of involvement. This case is a little different because the court comes at it only after the question has been decided by

two administrations. And everybody says, look, this Congress itself to set the parameters for what prisons should do it and what kind of discretions they should exercise, and risks was open ended in the nine Statute under the Foreign sovereigns Muni Act. You can interpret it either way that Congress only wanted to allow civil actions to go forward and only then under particular exceptions, or whether Congress simply just didn't think about criminal prosecutions at all, because there's nothing

specific about criminal prosecutions under the Floorn seven Meaniac. So both sides I think would be happy if Congress would get involved and set the stage. Thanks so much. How that's Professor Harold Crent of the Chicago Kent College of Law. And that's it for this edition of the Bloomberg Law Show. Remember you can always get the latest legal news on

our Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at www dot bloomberg dot com slash podcast, slash Law, and remember to tune into The Bloomberg Law Show every week night at ten BM Wall Street Time. I'm June Grosso and you're listening to Bloomberg