If Trump's Adult Children Helped Him Commit Fraud, New York Prosecutors Are About to Find Out
Levin Report
If Trump’s Adult Children Helped Him Commit Fraud, New York Prosecutors Are About to Find Out
A judge has ordered the Trump Organization to hand over Ivanka, Eric, and Don Jr.’s company devices to the New York Attorney General’s office.
By Bess Levin
September 24, 2021
Time was, U.S. presidents left office and focused on their philanthropic foundations, became amateur painters, and wrote very long books. Then there’s Donald Trump, who’s taken a slightly different tack, in that he spends his day crashing weddings, trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and drowning in lawsuits, civil probes, and criminal investigations.
One of the most significant legal actions, of course, is the Manhattan district attorney’s inquiry into Trump and his company’s financial dealings, which has thus far resulted in 15 charges against the Trump Organization and its longtime CFO, Allen Weisselberg. (Both parties have pleaded not guilty to all counts, which include criminal tax fraud, grand larceny, falsifying business records, and scheming to defraud the government.) But there are also at least three other criminal inquiries, numerous lawsuits, and an investigation by the New York attorney general’s office, which is about to get a cornucopia of key documents no thanks to the ex-president’s company.
In a September 2 order unsealed Friday, a judge said that the Trump Organization must comply with subpoenas issued by New York attorney general Letitia James’s office, or hire an outside firm to search through its documents and turn them over to prosecutors. According to Bloomberg, the company has until September 30 to “report on its efforts to preserve, collect, and produce all documents responsive to subpoenas issued by James as part of a civil probe into whether the company manipulated the value of its assets for loans and tax breaks,” as ordered by state court Justice Arthur Engoron. If James isn’t satisfied, the Trump Organization will have to hire a third party to oversee compliance, and while it is free to select one, the attorney general will have to approve it, according to The Daily Beast—in case anyone was thinking of hiring Rudy Giuliani & Sons at Your Service LLC. Per Bloomberg:
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According to Bloomberg, it’s not just Trump who should be concerned about the judge’s order, but his adult children as well. The government’s search includes devices issued “to about two dozen people involved with the company, including Trump and three of his adult children, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Ivanka Trump,” according to the outlet. Per The Daily Beast, others include chief operating officer Matthew Calamari, company controller Jeffrey S. McConney, Weisselberg, and Trump’s personal assistant Rhona Graff, whose correspondence could be extremely illuminating given that Trump has been known to personally eschew email and likely relied on other people to share his thoughts in writing. Last fall, The New York Times reported that one of the ways Trump was able to frequently pay virtually nothing in federal income taxes was by writing off virtually every aspect of his life as a business expense. That, according to the Times, has included flights between his homes, meals, and $70,000 worth of haircuts, in addition to classifying Seven Springs as an investment property, despite Eric Trump telling Forbes in 2014 that the place is a family compound.
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https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/09/trump-organization-ny-attorney-general-documents
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