Former President Donald Trump’s son Don Jr. was deposed as part of the District of Columbia’s lawsuit alleging the misuse of Trump inaugural funds, according to a court filing.
Court documents first reported by CNN show that the former President’s son was deposed on Feb. 11 and answered questions about a contract signed by the Trump Organization for a block of hotel rooms at the Loews Madison Hotel in Washington during the week of the 2017 inauguration.
The news of Don Jr’s deposition comes as reports show the eldest of Trump’s sons has also become increasingly embroiled in a separate criminal investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office into the former president and his company.
Don Jr., who serves as the Trump Organization’s executive vice president, took the reins of the family business alongside his brother Eric Trump during his father’s term in the White House.
The D.C. attorney general’s office alleges in the filing that the Trump Organization signed a contract with the Loews Madison hotel for roughly $50,000 for a block of rooms during the 2017 inauguration, and that the invoice was later forwarded to the Presidential Inaugural Committee and paid.
The filing states that Trump’s deposition “raised further questions” about the nature of the invoice and, simultaneously, revealed new evidence that defendants had not yet been able to produce.
The D.C. attorney general’s office has requested to have more time to obtain discovery materials and conduct depositions, citing “repeated obstacles,” that included “misleading testimony.”
While 10 witnesses have been deposed in the case, only three were able to testify about the Trump Presidential Inaugural Committee’s payment of the Loews Madison invoice, the attorney general’s office noted in the filing.
“These witnesses gave inconsistent accounts of the purpose of the contract and why the PIC agreed to pay it, and none of the witnesses gave a complete or accurate account of the circumstances surrounding the invoice,” the filing stated.
Then-deputy chair of the Presidential Inaugural Committee Rick Gates said that he’d received an email from a collection agency in July 2017 for the unpaid hotel bill.
In his deposition, Gates said the hotel rooms were booked by Gentry Beach a friend of Don Jr. who said they were rooms designated to major donors to the committee.
According to the filing, Don Jr. offered a different explanation for the names associated with rooms billed to the committee, saying they were “associated with the campaign or with the Trump family.”
The filing said that the Don Jr. had testified that one individual was a friend from college, one was a Trump family driver and another was a personality from the “Real Housewives of New York,” who is a friend of the Trump family.
The transaction involving the hotel rooms is another puzzle piece in a lawsuit filed by the D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine’s office against the 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee last year that alleged “blatantly and unlawfully abusing nonprofit funds to enrich the Trump family.”
The suit made a series of allegations, including that the committee had been overcharged for services at the Trump International Hotel that also involved a private party for the now ex-president’s three older children.
