The wheels of justice are grinding slowly, but grind on they are as Private Citizen Trump now faces a New York state judge's order to turn over documents to Attorney General Tish James's office.
A New York judge on Friday increased pressure on former President Donald J. Trump’s family business and several associates, ordering them to give state investigators documents in a civil inquiry into whether the company misstated assets to get bank loans and tax benefits.
It was the second blow that the judge, Arthur F. Engoron of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, had dealt to Mr. Trump’s company in recent weeks.
In December, he ordered the company, the Trump Organization, to produce records that its lawyers had tried to shield, including some related to a Westchester County, N.Y., property that is among those being scrutinized by the New York State attorney general, Letitia James.
On Friday, Justice Engoron went further, saying that even more documents, as well as communications with a law firm hired by the Trump Organization, had to be handed over to Ms. James’s office. In doing so, he rejected the lawyers’ claim that the documents at issue were covered by attorney-client privilege.
The ruling was a fresh reminder that Mr. Trump — who left office about a week ago under the cloud of impeachment and who is headed for a Senate trial on a charge of “incitement of insurrection” after his supporters stormed the Capitol in a violent rampage — faces significant legal jeopardy as a private citizen.
The most serious threats confronting the former president include a criminal investigation by the Manhattan district attorney and the civil inquiry by the attorney general into possible fraud in Mr. Trump’s business dealings before he was elected.
Ms. James’s investigation began in March 2019, after Michael D. Cohen, the former president’s onetime lawyer, told Congress that Mr. Trump had inflated his assets in financial statements to secure bank loans and understated them elsewhere to reduce his tax bill.
Investigators in Ms. James’s office have focused their attention on an array of transactions, including a financial restructuring of the Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago in 2010 that resulted in the Fortress Credit Corporation forgiving debt worth more than $100 million.
Ms. James’s office has said in court documents that the Trump Organization — Mr. Trump’s main business vehicle — had thwarted efforts to determine how that money was reflected in its tax filings, and whether it was declared as income, as the law typically requires.
I'm glad that Tish James isn't afraid of Trump or his army of cultists -- you don't rise to New York AG without being willing to take on massive white collar criminal enterprises like the Trump Organization -- but I do fear for her people and for James herself.
We already know Trump cultists are willing to kill for their leader. If Trump is ever actually indicted and perp-walked into a Manhattan precinct, it won't go well I'm thinking, and I have no idea how many nutjobs Trump has inside James's office or among the NYPD, but it's got to be a non-zero number. There are people who will be willing to go after James for him.
Still, the investigation moves on. If James is still getting documents, it may be some time before Trump is charged, and that may be the point.
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