The New York State attorney general’s office, which last month subpoenaed Donald J. Trump as part of a civil investigation into his business practices, is also seeking to question two of his adult children as part of the inquiry.
The involvement of the children, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, was disclosed in court documents filed on Monday as the Trump Organization sought to block lawyers for the attorney general, Letitia James, from questioning the former president and his children.
The subpoenas for the former president and two of his children were served on Dec. 1, according to one of the documents. Eric Trump, another of Mr. Trump’s sons, was already questioned by Ms. James’s office in October 2020.
The attorney general’s effort to interview Mr. Trump under oath became public last month, but it was not previously known that her office, which has been conducting a civil investigation into the former president’s business practices for almost three years, was also looking to question Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump.
Ms. James’s civil inquiry is focused on whether Mr. Trump fraudulently inflated the value of his assets to secure bank loans while understating them elsewhere to reduce his tax bill.
Her office has subpoenaed a number of documents as part of her scrutiny of many Trump Organization properties, including the Seven Springs estate in Westchester County and the Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago.
If her lawyers find evidence of wrongdoing, the office can file a lawsuit. As the inquiry is a civil one, Ms. James cannot file criminal charges.
But Ms. James’s office is also involved in the separate criminal investigation now being led by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, who was sworn in on Saturday. The previous district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., who had been supervising the investigation for more than three years, left office at the end of the year.
In their motion filed Monday to block the questioning, lawyers for the Trump Organization and the family argued that Ms. James was attempting to improperly sidestep the grand jury process in the criminal investigation by questioning the Trump family members under oath as part of the civil inquiry.
By doing so, the lawyers argued, Ms. James would be able to obtain information valuable to the criminal investigation from the family members without having to give them the immunity from prosecution that New York law would require were they to testify before a grand jury.
“She cannot wear two hats and do a civil investigation and a criminal investigation with the D.A. at the same time,” said a lawyer for Mr. Trump, Ronald P. Fischetti, adding that Ms. James had politicized her role as attorney general.
Alan S. Futerfas, a lawyer who represents Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, called the attorney general’s actions “unprecedented” and argued that the “subpoenas circumvent the rights to grand jury protections we all have.”
In a statement, Ms. James said: “These delay tactics will not stop us from following the facts or the law, which is why we will be asking the court to compel Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump to testify with our office under oath. Our investigation will continue undeterred.”
Asked about the argument in the motion, Bruce Green, who directs a center for legal ethics at Fordham University, said that the Trump family members would still be able to invoke their right against self-incrimination if Ms. James’s office won the right to question them.
The Trump Investigations
Numerous inquiries. Since former President Donald Trump left office, there have been many investigations and inquiries into his businesses and personal affairs. Here’s a list of those ongoing:
Mr. Green said that lawyers for the family would have to show, rather than simply state, that Ms. James was abusing the civil process to gather evidence for the criminal case.
Refusing to testify could hurt the Trump family in the civil inquiry, as judges and juries in civil actions are allowed to take such refusals into account. But prosecutors in criminal cases are barred from using defendants’ silence against them.
Mr. Trump’s three elder children — Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric — have long been deeply involved in their father’s company, the Trump Organization, which each of them joined shortly after graduating from college.
When Mr. Trump became president in 2017, he turned the business over to Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, as well as the company’s longtime chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg. Ms. Trump took an office in the West Wing.
Mr. Weisselberg and the Trump Organization were indicted in July as part of the criminal inquiry and accused by Mr. Vance’s prosecutors of running a tax-avoidance scheme in which executives were compensated with off-the-books benefits. Lawyers for Mr. Weisselberg have said that he will fight the charges in court.
Last month, lawyers for Mr. Trump filed a lawsuit against Ms. James, seeking to halt her civil inquiry and to bar her participation in the criminal investigation. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Albany, argued that Ms. James had violated Mr. Trump’s political rights and that her actions had been “guided solely by political animus.”
“Neither Mr. Trump nor the Trump Organization get to dictate if and where they will answer for their actions,” Ms. James said in response. Her office has not yet responded to the lawsuit in court.