The impending government shutdown might inadvertently derail a deposition of Donald Trump that has been years in the making, attorneys in a long-running civil lawsuit warned Thursday.
Lawyers for former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page — who are suing the Justice Department claiming their departures from the bureau were improperly influenced by Trump — say they’ve scheduled a two-hour Oct. 17 session with the former president.
However, they noted that the Justice Department typically seeks to delay all civil matters during government shutdowns and might seek to do so in the Strzok-Page case as well.
“Considering the lengthy effort that scheduling Mr. Trump’s deposition required and that a stay might result in substantial delay of the conclusion of this action, Plaintiffs will oppose any stay and expect to promptly request relief from any default stay that is imposed,” Strzok and Page’s attorneys wrote.
The two former FBI employees were involved in Trump-related investigations in 2016 and 2017 before the public release of their private text messages by Justice Department officials revealed hostility and disgust with Trump. They’ve sued over the handling of those messages and claimed that Trump’s public attacks on them contributed to the FBI’s decision to fire Strzok and Page’s resignation.
Deposing Trump is the last step in the process of evidence gathering connected to the lawsuit, which has also resulted in depositions of FBI Director Christopher Wray and other senior FBI and DOJ officials.
The effort to depose Trump has been laborious. An earlier scheduled deposition in the spring was postponed after the Justice Department sought to block it altogether, claiming that Strzok and Page had failed to present evidence that Trump’s conduct had any bearing on their departures from the bureau. But Judge Amy Berman Jackson ordered a narrow and limited deposition of Trump despite DOJ’s efforts.
The Justice Department sought intervention from an appellate court to block Trump’s deposition, but an appeals court panel rejected the effort over the summer, putting Trump’s deposition back on track.
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