WASHINGTON — As Donald Trump continues to raise the option of a 2024 presidential candidacy, testimony to his iron grip on the Republican Party, his long legal term is more dubious and confusing Thursday, after prosecutors announced tax fraud tariffs opposed to his eponymous enterprise and unwavering firmness. executive.
New York prosecutors accuse the Trump Organization of a tax fraud scheme that has lasted for years and allowed business leaders to avoid paying thousands of dollars in state and federal taxes. about 50 years ago, the program’s largest beneficiary, which allowed it to raise about $1. 76 million in unallocatory revenue, according to the indictment.
The charges, the result of a joint investigation through Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance and New York Attorney General Letitia James, do not implicate the former president and do not put him, at least for now, in danger of going to jail. In the absence of immunity granted through the presidency, Trump is closer than ever to a legal danger, according to experts.
“The biggest prospective implication is that this is just the beginning of a big investigation,” said Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor in Washington, D. C. and an expert on white-collar crime, adding that the rate that opposes the Trump organization and Weisselberg does not. save prosecutors from prosecuting other members of the company, adding Trump: “It’s nothing unusual in giant white collar investigations to follow a few more initial indictments. “
James, who ran for attorney general on a promise to investigate Trump, left open the option for others to be indicted. “This investigation will continue and we will see the facts and the law anywhere they lead,” James said in a statement.
Duncan Levin, an attorney for Jennifer Weisselberg, Allen Weisselberg’s former daughter-in-law who cooperated with prosecutors, warned that the allegations likely constitute the initiation of legal action contrary to Trump’s interests and associates.
Levin said his client, who provided at least 10 boxes of documents to prosecutors and pledged to testify before a grand jury or trial, toasted in conversations in which Trump discussed granting benefits, adding license plates and apartment renovations, rather than Allen Weisselberg’s salary. .
Vance’s investigated whether the Trump Organization manipulated asset values to offload comfortable loans and lowered tax rates. Investigators also investigated hidden cash bills made to women who allegedly had an affair with Trump. James announced in May that his parallel civil investigation had become a criminal investigation and that the state government had joined vance’s investigation.
The district attorney scored a victory in the previous primary this year, after Trump’s accounting corporation was forced to hand over 8 years of Trump’s tax instances following a long legal war that ended in the Supreme Court. The investigation appears to have accelerated last month with the revelation. that a special grand jury had been convened to read about imaginable evidence of criminality through the president, his affiliates or the company itself.
Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, who has admitted to meeting with investigators several times, is also cooperating with prosecutors. Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal fees that included financial violations of crusades for providing secret cash bills on Trump’s behalf and lying to Congress.
He said the allegations marked the end of Trump’s “political farce, also known as the American political nightmare. “
As for Trump’s legal responsibility, Cohen said, “The documents and the numbers don’t lie, Donald Trump does. “
As lawyers for the Trump Organization fight with New York prosecutors, Trump will seek to make the allegations a political factor by claiming they are part of a Democratic plot to topple him, as well as his “Make America Great Again” campaign.
The former president has been attacking the prosecutor’s office for weeks now and downplaying the accusations against him and his company.
“In New York, prosecutors on the radical left lately are spending a lot of time and cash threatening families and seeking to destroy the lives of innocent people, really very smart people, in their crusade to inflict pain on me,” Trump told his supporters in a June five speech to the North Carolina Republican Party.
Political analysts have said Trump’s claims may play with conservatives, and the allegations are unlikely to hurt him among the Republican electorate that will be the party’s presidential nominee in 2024.
“Trump has long complained about being persecuted through Democrats,” republican commentator Scott Jennings said. “For many other people than this, this (set of allegations) will be a confirmation event. “
But the long-term revelations of the investigation are likely to have a political effect on Trump, as he contemplates some other presidential candidacy. efforts to reduce tax expenditures through millions of dollars, political and legal analysts said.
Norm Eisen, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, said the allegations are the end or “even the beginning of the end. “
“To paraphrase Churchill, this is just the end of the beginning,” said Eisen, who co-wrote a report on the investigation into Trump’s affairs. “There will possibly be other fees to come, he added for Trump, which will make the impeachment even harder to manipulate with his usual bluster. “
It’s unclear what this means for the Trump Organization and the Trump brand, yet in the past, corporations have gone bankrupt after an indictment.
“They can also just lose investors. This would possibly be the willingness of the parties to lend to them or do business with them. This obviously puts a cloud over the head of the company,” said Jessica Roth, a former Manhattan federal prosecutor and a teacher at the Cardozo School. of the law.
It is not at all for prosecutors to attack corporations in addition to executives. The charges usually lead to convictions up to allegations of guilt, and corporations rarely go to trial, experts say.
In deciding whether or not to rate companies, prosecutors rely on a number of factors.
“How widespread are the violations within the company?How long have they lasted?How serious are they?What is the range of the other people involved?What is the history of the company?Is there a history of other infractions or criminality?Measures? To what extent has the company cooperated with prosecutors?What would be the collateral consequences for innocent parties, such as employees, Roth said.
That doesn’t mean all of those points apply to the Trump Organization, Roth said, but it does mean at least one is present.
“There are cases where prosecutors will evaluate where maybe one thing is compelling and others aren’t present, but each case is unique,” Roth said.