As the federal tax fraud case against the Trump Organization goes to jury today, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg's case against Trump over the hush money payments to Stormy Daniels is heating up.
The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, is hiring a former senior Justice Department official with a history of taking on Donald J. Trump and his family business as the office seeks to ramp up its investigation into the former president.
The official, Matthew Colangelo, who before acting as third in command at the Justice Department, led the New York attorney general’s civil inquiry into Mr. Trump, is likely to become one of the leaders of the district attorney’s criminal inquiry into the former president.
The hire marks the latest turn in a long-running investigation that has proceeded in fits and starts in recent years. When Mr. Bragg took office in January, his predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., had directed prosecutors to begin presenting evidence about Mr. Trump’s inflation of his assets to a grand jury.
But Mr. Bragg grew concerned about the strength of the case. In February, when he told the two senior prosecutors leading the investigation, Mark F. Pomerantz and Carey Dunne, that he was not prepared to authorize charges, they resigned, clouding the future of the inquiry.
Mr. Bragg insisted that it was continuing, and in recent months, his prosecutors, led by the office’s head of investigations, Susan Hoffinger, have renewed their focus on a hush-money payment to a porn star who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump.
Mr. Colangelo’s work in the New York attorney general’s office may also be relevant in his new job: Manhattan prosecutors have also scrutinized whether the former president illegally inflated the value of his assets, and the New York attorney general, Letitia James, looked at the same practices. In September, she filed a lawsuit accusing the former president of overvaluing his assets by billions of dollars.
By then, Mr. Colangelo was working at the Department of Justice, having been appointed as acting associate attorney general when President Biden took office. In that job, the third highest-ranking at the department, Mr. Colangelo helped oversee the Civil, Civil Rights, Antitrust and Tax divisions, among others.
He stepped aside when a permanent associate attorney general, Vanita Gupta, was appointed but continued working as her deputy and supervised lawyers in those divisions.
Mr. Colangelo, 48, who also worked in the Obama administration as a senior Labor Department official, will join the district attorney’s office as senior counsel. In addition to helping with its “most sensitive and high-profile white-collar investigations,” he is expected to focus on housing and tenant protection and labor and worker protection, priorities for Mr. Bragg.
“Matthew Colangelo brings a wealth of economic justice experience combined with complex white-collar investigations, and he has the sound judgment and integrity needed to pursue justice against powerful people and institutions when they abuse their power,” Mr. Bragg said in a statement confirming the hire.
The U.S. attorney general, Merrick B. Garland, said in a statement that he had relied on Mr. Colangelo’s “wise counsel and excellent judgment” since his first day in the office.
So now that Bragg is staffing up, I can think of six cases Trump now has to deal with off the top of my head:
- Jack Smith's special counsel investigation at the federal level
- The Trump Organization tax fraud case
- The Manhattan DA's investigation into Stormy Daniels hush money
- Fani Willis's investigation into Georgia election fraud by Trump and the Georgia GOP
- Tish James and the NY State investigation into Trump
- E. Jean Carroll's sexual assault case against Trump.
At least one of these has to put Trump in prison somehow., right?
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