Eric Trump Proves Both Dunning-Kruger And Streisand Effect Are Totally Real

This morning Eric Trump tweeted that his family had “filed suit in NY Supreme Court outlining the illegal & blatantly unethical behavior of Attorney General Letitia James. It is ‘third-world’ prosecutorial misconduct and her viciousness is truly embarrassing to the great state of New York.”

Today our family filed suit in NY Supreme Court outlining the illegal & blatantly unethical behavior of Attorney General Letitia James. It is “third-world” prosecutorial misconduct and her viciousness is truly embarrassing to the great state of New York. https://t.co/XaSF9QUREi

— Eric Trump (@EricTrump) February 2, 2022

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Turns out, our Eric is a wee bit confused. If you can even believe it.

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Here on Planet Earth, the Trump family didn’t “file suit” at all. They filed a motion to quash subpoenas for his father, brother, and sister in the lawsuit New York Attorney General Tish James filed against them back in 2020. That would be the lawsuit which originated with her motion to enforce a subpoena for Eric Trump’s own testimony — a motion which the AG won.

Perhaps Eric swam a couple laps around the fish bowl and forgot that he sat for that deposition in October of 2020. After all, he is the genius that made this investigation public by working himself into a tantrum on national television about all the subpoenas his family was getting, and then refused to be deposed, allowing James to docket a 115-page motion to compel laying out his family’s history of questionable real estate valuations.

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Eric Trump: I’m on the receiving end. Every single day, my father gets subpoena after subpoena pic.twitter.com/StaTEE0XfU

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 2, 2021

The family did file a preposterous federal suit demanding that the Southern District of New York swoop in and rescue them from That Mean Lady and her “racist” prosecution. But even these pudding brains aren’t stupid enough to demand a third bite of the apple. (Famous last words.)

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The motion to quash is the same aggressive hyperventilation as every other Trump motion, characterizing the investigation as “a blatant and obvious attempt to suppress [Trump’s] voice, interfere with his political ambitions and silence the will of millions of voters – a violation of our nation’s most fundamental constitutional rights.” As James herself pointed out in a response to the federal suit, it’s pretty hard to argue that your speech is being stifled when you never, ever shut up.

But the state motion to quash relies less on federal constitutional rights and more on a vagary of New York law, which grants automatic immunity for witnesses who testify to a criminal grand jury. The Trumps allege that the AG is illegally circumventing this requirement by using civil subpoenas to compel testimony that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg could otherwise only get by offering the witnesses immunity.

The problem with this argument, and it’s one that James pointed out in her last motion, is that no one can compel testimony in a civil deposition. James was able to force Eric Trump to show up, but she wasn’t able to make him answer any particular question. He had every right to plead the Fifth, and he did just that upwards of 500 times in six hours.

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And despite that dingbat’s tweeter screeching about “‘third world’ prosecutorial misconduct,” no one pulled out his finger nails when he refused to answer. The fact that Eric would be embarrassed about it if he remembered that it happened, or that his father and siblings would like to avoid a public record of them pleading the Fifth over and over again about the family business, is of no legal moment.

If the court refuses to block the subpoenas for Vanky and Deej, the Trumps would also accept a stay until the criminal probe is complete.  And no Trump filing would be complete without at least ten pages of whining about selective prosecution by evil Democrat liberals. Which is rich coming from a guy who stood on a debate stage and told his opponent that she’d be “in jail” if he won the election.

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The motion contains ominous mentions of television hosts asking James for comment about the Trump case, only to be rebuffed.

“Joy, you know I love you, right? I do, I do, I do. So, you know I can’t admit or deny,” she laughed to The View’s Joy Behar. “I cannot admit and/or deny those allegations in the preface of your question.”

“When he leaves office as a private citizen, he will no longer have presidential immunity, so stay tuned,” she told Samantha Bee.

They’ve been making these same arguments for two years, and Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron keeps ordering them to comply with the subpoenas for documents and testimony, but maybe the fiftieth time’s the charm. Maybe the court will be so impressed with the family filing an identical case in federal court that he’ll finally order discovery on the issue of AG James’s bad motives and “selective prosecution.”

But I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

Topics

Eric Trump, Government, Letitia James