It was one of the largest national bummers of all time. It exploded out of nowhere. We awoke one sunny morning to find out that dawn lightening raids had been carried out by the FBI on both the home, as well as the office of President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, and alleged fixer, Michael Cohen. A Special Master was appointed by the court to determine what the FBI could see, and what was attorney-client protected information.
In the end, Cohen was hit by a smorgasbord of charges, and cooperated. Not enough to satisfy the Southern District of New York, which cut him only a partial deal. One of the charges Cohen went down for was laundering money through the Trump organization to pay of Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougle, two adult entertainers, to shut them up in the days before the 2016 election. And the DOJ even let leak that Individual One in the Cohen indictment was in fact President Donald Trump. In testimony before congress, Cohen confirmed that he paid the money for the benefit of, and at the direction of Individual One, Donald Trump.
Then it call came to an abrupt end. Cohen took a deal, and went up the river for 3 years. He is now finishing his sentence under home confinement. Following the DOJ’s OLC ruling, Trump, as a sitting President, was not indicted. But then, at the tail end of the Barr debacle at the DOJ, the SDNY quietly announced that they were closing the investigation, and that no further indictments would be forthcoming. Basically, Individual One was getting off scot free.
Don’t count on it. Trump is no longer President, and it’s a brave new world. At somewhere around 2 PM EST tomorrow, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office will unseal the first indictments against the Trump organization and Trump CFO Allen Weisselberg. Trump’s attorney has told the media that he has been assured that Trump himself will not be indicted tomorrow. Trust me, they didn’t call in Mark Pomerantz to throw out a few criminal tax violations. He is the preeminent RICO lawyer on both sides. This is just the start.
Which brings us to the meat and potatoes. In their charges against Cohen, the SDNY claimed that the Daniels-McDougle hush money payments were illegally laundered through the Trump organization books by being listed falsely as legal expenses. All of which is meaningless, since the SDNY closed the federal case against Trump.
But as with so many things legal, the devil is in the details. The federal government basically said that the Trump organization cooked the books to hide the hush money payments. And that one simple fact is why Individual One may just become a prime candidate to become Defendant One.
Because the Trump organization only keeps one set of books! Which means that the same set of books that the SDNY determined were cooked to hide the payments are the exact same books that the Trump organization would present to New York state regulators. And in New York state, it is a crime to misrepresent company financial data on records that will be presented to state regulators.
Welcome back Individual One! Forget about FEC violations? In the state of New York it is illegal to falsely alter company books that will be seen by state regulators. That’s state law. Which begs the ancient Latin question, Qui bono? In English, Who benefits? And there isn’t a single living creature on the Trump organization who would benefit from laundering hush money payments through the Trump organization books other than Donald Trump. Just like the SDNY figured out.
So don’t get bummed tomorrow if you don’t see your Christmas wish list unveiled in the indictments tomorrow. The grand jury is locked in to this investigation through November, and it is highly likely that there will be superseding indictments down the road. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if one of them isn’t finally holding Trump responsible for the hush money payments. Don’t touch that dial.
Follow me on Twitter at @RealMurfster35
I think SDNY got sat upon to close that case. Fortunately, NYS and NYC both have income taxes of their own…and the NYS AG has more guts than the NYC DA, who was bought off in an earlier case.
Yes, Trump & Barr foiled the SDNY cases by firing Bharara in 2017 and then Berman in 2020, while also reducing $ and bodies and breaking up assembled litigation teams in SDNY to avoid prosecution. But NY State & Cuomo did the opposite after NY State voters voted in a Dem trifecta of control with the 2018 election for the first time since 2009. NY AG added resources, manpower and hired expert witnesses to pursue criminal and civil charges using evidence previously gathered by numerous federal state local and private investigative sources; along with evidence gathered on their own. Be interesting to see whether Trump Seven Springs is included in the criminal tax fraud charges alleged by Tish James – in addition to all the fraud evidence in NY Times’ 2018 expose.
Yet the NYS AG has brought a total of two civil cases and NO criminal charges against the Trumps while the Manhattan DA is obviously intent on repairing his reputation before he retires at the end of this year.
Vance has spent three exhausting years investigating Trump. When SDNY dropped the only investigation they had going and let it lapse, Vance went to a judge to get that case declared officially closed so he could take it over. He’s had to fight Trump, Barr and even the SDNY for crying out loud, all the way up to SCOTUS which, contrary to popular belief, did not grant him access to Trump’s financial records. They told him he’d have to start the process all over again back in the lower courts where Trump again challenged him.
Meanwhile, two of the cases he’d built against Trump lapsed because statutes ran out. But still he fought on.
The only reason Tish James’s office is now involved is that Vance asked her office for assistance. The case he’s investigating is so large now it’s outgrown the limited personnel and resources of the Manhattan DA office. Fortunately, the NYS AG agreed, probably because she’s staring down a reelection fight that will inevitably compare her record unfavourably with that of the NYC DA and that’s not a comparison the state AG wants to be confronting in an election year.
I know of Cy Vance’s flawed history but he’s making up for it. He’s the only one building a massive criminal case against Trump, his business and his crime family. If he pulls this off – and all the signs say he will – he’ll deserve the majority of the credit.
Murfster – You may be aware that in October 2020 NY Gov. Cuomo signed a law previously passed by the NY Assembly and NY Senate plugging the double-jeopardy loophole – meaning NY State can pursue criminal charges for the same violations/acts that federal Trump appointed Judges might pardon or dismiss charges against. Also be aware that there’s a 5 year statute of limitations in NY State for many (but not all) tax violations, so time is of the essence for AG Tish James on some of the potential tax fraud charges.
If NYC isn’t the undisputed Capitol of the international financial world, it’s for damned sure second on any short list of any sane person that deals in finance and economics. Because of that, NY State has it’s own state version of RICO which has teeth almost as sharp as the federal version. I bring this up not just for general purposes, but some of the money laundering involves taxes. With complicated taxes rich (or highly leveraged like Trump) file stuff is carried over from year to year – sometimes spread out over a lot more than five years. That means Trump’s taxes as recently as his return filed earlier this year might contain connections to stuff that happened longer than five years ago. Basically, while the crime might have started at a time outside the statute of limitations, or even largely completed by the time the statue would typically expire in tax situations where either liabilities or credits were part of tax returns after the statute would otherwise have expired then the time frame can sometimes be extended. It’s complicated as hell to be sure, but given how hard Trump has fought to keep his actual taxes and supporting documentation (all those tax schedules that go along with the 1040) out of prosecutor’s hands I suspect he knows damn well he’s still on the hook for plenty of stuff.
But overall I’m really hoping NY State uses their own version of RICO on the Trump Org. because there is a decades long practice of criminal behavior. THAT is what probably keeps Trump up bouncing back and forth between rage and fear many a night. And his evil spawn too. And let’s not forget Jared in all this.
I still say that having actually been inside a federal prison visiting his own not so dear old dad Jared has seen all he needs to see to know he wants no part of all that. Like many a rich asshole he’s assumed he will skate, but he also knows what can happen if prosecutors decide it’s time to make an example out of someone. He would flip on Trump in a heartbeat if that’s what it takes to avoid prison himself, and I have no doubt at all he long ago set things up to do so if necessary. IF, as it now seems indictments are coming down the pike in the months ahead and the Trump Org. is on the rocks, and if some of the mixing of the Trump and Kushner “empires” starts getting attention things are going to get both interesting and messy and real fast. The real question is what wannabe Princess Ivanka does. Or rather who she sides with – daddy or hubby. While she’s likely the last person Trump will throw under the bus to save his own ass, he will do so if he has to and while she can’t yet bring herself to believe he’d do so the rest of us know he would. Like I said, this could be both messy and interesting and before the end of this year!
So helpful this information, and all in one place……
I think one of the best ways for all of us at this point to go forward is to take the words of several former prosecutors to heart. Glenn Kirschner last night said this is only the beginning, and that no case of this sort he has ever seen in his more than 30 years as a federal prosecutor or a JAG ever ended with the opening salvo indictment, And he reminds us that the Mueller investigation began with Papadopoulos (now a who?) and ended with the big fish, Trump himself.
And agree that this is affecting Trump. He is, if even possible, far more unhinged and frantic than he was during several other occasions when he was being investigated.
Only problem I have with your analysis is this: Ok, NY has it’s own RICO statutes. Even if everything is done correctly and in time, the case is brought to court and trumpty is found guilty what happens when it goes to the S.C.’s? I can see them pulling something out of their a*ses to save his sorry a*s. Yes, we had a surprise or two this session but then they came together just as everyone knew they would-in favor of dark money, corporations, and theocracy.
I always get a very bad feeling when I think about our current S.C.-they can (and already have) cause so much damage. There are some real evil mother-f*ckers sitting on it now.
I think we’ll find that Cy Vance – not Tish James, her office is assisting Vance’s investigations – is building a far bigger case than a few tax law violations. This is going to be a major enterprise corruption case (NYS’s version of RICO).
When the prospect of a Trump indictment is discussed, I immediately activate my wishful thinking detector. I’d be willing to make a gentlemen’s wager that no matter how many Trump CFOs and lawyers are indicted, the Big Man himself will never be a criminal defendant. Civil suits are one thing, but ultimate justice is another. Trump’s Teflon almost makes me wish that there was an afterlife….
I’ll be writing about this soon. Please look out for that article.
Right now I need some sleep since I was up half the night writing “Has MAGA Fanatics Idolization of QAnon Left Trump Behind?” which I hope you’ll read too.
Cui bono (double dative) not “qui bono”.