Meet the only lawyer who's managed to sit Donald Trump down for a deposition since the 2016 election
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- Just one lawyer has managed to depose Donald Trump since the 2016 election.
- Persistence works, says Benjamin Dictor, who reps Mexican-American victims of a Trump Tower assault.
- Video of Trump's testimony will be played in a Bronx courtroom in two months if case goes to trial.
Donald Trump has never met a subpoena he didn't try to dodge.
Now, with New York Attorney General Letitia James fighting for his testimony — and members of the January 6 Committee circling close with subpoenas of their own — they could all take some inspiration from Manhattan lawyer Benjamin Dictor.
In the years since Trump's 2016 election, Dictor alone has succeeded in getting the former president to sit down at a conference table, raise his right hand and swear to tell the truth in a deposition.
It took just short of three years.
The lawyer's word of advice for the crowd of those still trying, including plaintiffs in at least a dozen current lawsuits?
"Persistence," says Dictor, who represents four New Yorkers of Mexican heritage who say Trump's security guards assaulted them and broke up their protest outside Trump Tower in 2015.
"I can certainly say in our case, he and his legal team exhausted every possible legal resource to avoid testifying under oath," Dictor said of getting Trump to sit for a 4.5-hour deposition four months ago.
The former president has so far avoided all other deposition requests in the years since winning the presidency, using legal delays and his now-expired excuse of being too busy running the country.
Most prominent have been the efforts of New York Attorney General Letitia James, who has sparred with Trump for two years, even after a Manhattan judge ruled last month that he must comply with her subpoena and be deposed.
Trump is appealing that decision, and has sued James in return to stop her investigation entirely, calling it politically-motivated harassment.
Daniela Ochoa-Bravo
"Donald Trump first tried to get himself severed from the case; when that failed he tried to quash the subpoena to testify," including on appeal, remembered Dictor, a partner with Eisner Dictor & Lamadrid.
Multiple settlement conferences went nowhere.
Trump was still president on September 20, 2019, when Bronx Supreme Court Judge Doris M. Gonzalez issued a ruling stating, "More than 200 years ago our founders sought to escape an oppressive, tyrannical governance in which absolute power vested with a monarch.
"A fear of the recurrence of tyranny birthed our three-branch government adorned with checks and balances," she wrote. "Put more plainly, no government official, including the Executive, is above the law."
A deposition for sailors ... and presidents
Gonzalez ordered Trump give what's called a "de benne esse" deposition.
"It's a special kind of recorded deposition that will only be used at trial," Dictor told Insider.
"Historically, it's done if a party may not live to testify at trial, or, say if a sailor is going away to sea. Sitting presidents have been given this accommodation," he said, due to the magnitude of their day jobs.
But the COVID-19 pandemic, along with still more court battles and deadline extentions, would delay the deposition for another two years.
One of the original five plaintiffs, Johnny Hosvaldo Garcia Rojas, had by then died, leaving Efrain Galicia, Florencia Tejada Perez, Gonzalo Cruz Franco and Miguel Villalobos to carry on the case.
It was nine months after Trump left the White House when Gonzalez put her foot down for the last time, ruling, "Donald J. Trump shall appear for a deposition on October 18, 2021, at 10 a.m. at 721 5th Ave., New York, NY."
The address is Trump Tower, where the former president keeps a penthouse apartment and the headquarters to his real estate business.
Spencer Platt / Getty Images
Dictor remembers the day well — though he doesn't need to, as it's all on videotape, ready to be screened to a Bronx jury in lieu of Trump appearing in person if the case goes to trial as scheduled on May 2.
"We went into one of the conference rooms, I believe on the 25th floor," Dictor told Insider of the deposition.
"We sat down at a conference table. We had a videographer, an evidence specialist and a court reporter who was there to create a transcript," he said.
"At some point, Mr. Trump came into the room and he sat down. And there were introductions. And then he took an oath. He swore to tell the truth."
Christopher Gregory/Getty Images
Trump was asked about the caught-on-video events of Sept. 3, 2015, when a small but angry crowd gathered in mid-afternoon on the public sidewalk outside the Fifth Avenue skyscraper.
They were protesting comments Trump had made there three months earlier, in announcing his run for office.
Mexican immigrants are "bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists," Trump had said after descending the lobby's golden escalator. "And some, I assume, are good people."
Some of the protesters wore parody Ku Klux Klan robes, mocking Trump for having won the early support of white supremecist and former Grand Wizard David Duke.
Trump was asked in his deposition about any instructions regarding the use of physical force he gives his security staff, including Keith Schiller, the retired NYPD detective who had served as Trump's director of security since 2004.
Video of the scuffle shows Galicia chasing after Schiller, who had confiscated a cardboard protest sign reading, "Trump: Make America Racist Again." The two sides disagree about whether the sign had been on public or private property when Schiller grabbed it.
In the video, Galicia grabs Schiller from behind, and is quickly met with a round-house punch from the top guard.
Galicia stumbles backward, Schiller walks off with the sign, and Galicia scuffles next with a second guard who tries to hold him back.
Schiller, in a 2015 affidavit, said he "simply defended myself" when he used an open hand to strike Galicia, who he believed may have "reached for my holster."
Galicia, a part time substance abuse counselor who was born near Mexico City, swore in his own deposition that he saw no gun, and that "my goal was to grab the sign."
He visited the hospital twice due to pain in his head, he said; a CAT scan showed no injury.
"Donald Trump can talk, and he can say what he says, but I have to dissent," Galicia said, according to a transcript of his 2017 testimony.
"Did Donald Trump ever touch you," one of the former president's lawyers, Maron, asked him.
"Through Schiller he did," Galicia answered.
"Donald Trump," the lawyer repeated. "I'm saying, did Donald Trump himself ever touch you?"
"No," Galicia answered.
Trump has made no secret of what he thinks of protesters; in one of his final 2016 campaign rallies he told supporters that if anyone threw a tomato at him, they should "knock the crap out of them," and he'd pay their legal fees.
But what instructions, if any, Trump may have given Schiller and the other guards are crucial to the Bronx case.
"If Donald Trump authorized Keith Schiller to use physical force at any point in the course of his duties as a security guard and body guard, then under New York law Donald Trump may be held liable for the assault in front of Trump Tower," Dictor said.
"And Donald Trump does not even need to have ordered that specific assault."
Trump was "just another boss"
Dictor declined to describe Trump's testimony.
But the case file includes an affidavit from Trump, signed prior to the deposition, in which the former president swore he had nothing to do with hiring security personnel and was not present at — or any way involved in — the 2015 protest.
Trump's lawyers have argued in court papers that he "was not even in the vicinity."
And in a statement issued after the deposition, Trump said, "Rather than protest peacefully, the plaintiffs sought to rile up a crowd by blocking the entrance to Trump Tower on 5th Avenue, in the middle of the day, wearing Ku Klux Klan robes and hoods.
"When security tried to deescalate the situation, they were unfortunately met with taunts and violence from the plaintiffs themselves," Trump's statement said. "After years of litigation, I was pleased to have had the opportunity to tell my side of this ridiculous story — Just one more example of baseless harassment of your favorite President."
Dictor would only say this of Trump's deposition: "I'm a labor and employment lawyer, for employees and unions, and I have deposed a lot of bosses.
"I've deposed bodega owners, restaurateurs, landlords," he said.
"And the deposition of Donald Trump was very similar to the depositions I've taken in those situations. Bosses tend to have quite a bit in common, no matter what industry they're in," he added, leaving it at that.
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