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NYC vs the Trump Crime Family Watch Thread

PenelopeWitherspoon

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PenelopeWitherspoon

PenelopeWitherspoon 19093

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Yes, please!

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/nyregion/trump-investigation-manhattan.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&fbclid=IwAR3qfm2gu8PuDwiSy1f9EXlC0XR30jabo7Fi-2JWHvlOeukjYFQP07z8KHo

Manhattan D.A. Recruits Top Prosecutor for Trump Inquiry

The Manhattan district attorney has enlisted a former federal prosecutor who is an expert on white-collar crime to join the team investigating the Trump family business.

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merlin_182604024_60402ae6-abf0-4964-a21c

 

Donald J. Trump, seen here on the last day of his presidency, is the focus of at least two state criminal investigations. Donald J. Trump, seen here on the last day of his presidency, is the focus of at least two state criminal investigations. Credit...Pete Marovich for The New York Times

  • Feb. 18, 2021Updated 7:34 p.m. ET

As the Manhattan district attorney’s office steps up the criminal investigation of Donald J. Trump, it has reached outside its ranks to enlist a prominent former federal prosecutor to help scrutinize financial dealings at the former president’s company, according to several people with knowledge of the matter.

The former prosecutor, Mark F. Pomerantz, has deep experience investigating and defending white-collar and organized crime cases, bolstering the team under District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. that is examining Mr. Trump and his family business, the Trump Organization.

The investigation by Mr. Vance, a Democrat, is focused on possible tax and bank-related fraud, including whether the Trump Organization misled its lenders or local tax authorities about the value of his properties to obtain loans and tax benefits, the people with knowledge of the matter said, requesting anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the investigation. Mr. Trump has maintained he did nothing improper and has long railed against the inquiry, calling it a politically motivated “witch hunt.”

In recent months, Mr. Vance’s office has broadened the long-running investigation to include an array of financial transactions and Trump properties — including Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, various Trump hotels and the Seven Springs estate in Westchester County — as prosecutors await a ruling from the United States Supreme Court that could give them access to Mr. Trump’s tax returns.

The prosecutors have also interviewed a number of witnesses and have issued more than a dozen new subpoenas, including to one of Mr. Trump’s top lenders, Ladder Capital, the people with knowledge of the matter said.

In addition, investigators subpoenaed a company hired by Mr. Trump’s other main lender, Deutsche Bank, to assess the value of certain Trump properties, one of the people with knowledge of the previously unreported subpoenas said.

Months earlier, Mr. Vance’s office had subpoenaed records from Deutsche Bank itself, The New York Times previously reported. More recently, Deutsche Bank employees provided testimony to Mr. Vance’s office about the bank’s relationship with the Trump Organization, a person briefed on the matter said.

Still, despite the burst of investigative activity, prosecutors have said the tax returns and other financial records are vital to their inquiry — and the Supreme Court has delayed a final decision for months.

Manhattan prosecutors have also subpoenaed the Trump Organization for records related to tax deductions on millions of dollars in consulting fees, some of which appear to have gone to the former president’s daughter Ivanka Trump.

The Trump Organization turned over some of those records last month, though the prosecutors have questioned whether the company has fully responded to the subpoena, the people with knowledge of the matter said.

Mr. Trump won an acquittal in his second impeachment trial last week, but remains the focus of at least two state criminal investigations. Besides the inquiry in Manhattan, prosecutors in Georgia are scrutinizing Mr. Trump’s effort to persuade local officials to undo the election results there. His departure from office has left him without the shield from indictment that the presidency provided.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office has not accused Mr. Trump of wrongdoing and it remains unclear whether Mr. Vance, whose term ends in January, will ultimately bring charges against Mr. Trump or any Trump Organization employees.

The Trump Organization declined to comment, but in the past, lawyers for the company have said that its practices complied with the law and have called the investigation a “fishing expedition.”

Mr. Pomerantz, 69, was sworn in earlier this month to serve as a special assistant district attorney, according to Danny Frost, a spokesman for the district attorney, who otherwise declined to comment on the inquiry. Mr. Pomerantz will work solely on the Trump investigation.

The hiring of an outsider is a highly unusual move for a prosecutor’s office, but the two-and-a-half-year investigation of the former president and his family business is unusually complex. And Mr. Vance, whose office has had a few missteps in other white-collar cases, had already hired FTI, a large consulting company, to help analyze Mr. Trump’s financial records.

Prosecutors are scrutinizing whether the Trump Organization artificially inflated the value of some of his signature properties to obtain the best possible loans, while simultaneously lowballing the property values to reduce property taxes, the people with knowledge of the matter said. The prosecutors are also looking at the Trump Organization’s statements to insurance companies about the value of various assets.

The Trump Organization’s lawyers are likely to argue to prosecutors that it could not have duped sophisticated financial institutions that did their own analysis of Mr. Trump’s properties without relying on what Mr. Trump’s company told them. The company’s lawyers are also likely to emphasize that the practice of providing such differing valuations is widespread in New York’s real estate industry.

Deutsche Bank has said it is cooperating with the investigation. A spokesman for Ladder Capital, which securitized the loans years ago and thus no longer owns them, declined to comment.

Mr. Pomerantz, who has been helping with the case informally for months, has taken a temporary leave from the law firm Paul Weiss to join Mr. Vance’s office. Among other tasks, he will likely handle interactions with key witnesses.

Mr. Vance also retained veteran constitutional lawyers to work on the briefs filed in the 18-month legal battle over the office’s subpoena for Mr. Trump’s tax returns and other financial records, which has twice reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The case was argued by Mr. Vance’s general counsel, Carey Dunne, who is helping to lead the investigation.

The court could rule for a second time on the matter soon, potentially putting eight years of Mr. Trump’s personal and corporate tax records and other documents in the hands of prosecutors for the first time, a development that Mr. Vance’s office has called central to its investigation.

Mr. Pomerantz, a leading figure in the New York legal circles, clerked for Judge Edward Weinfeld in Manhattan and Justice Potter Stewart on the Supreme Court. He then became a federal prosecutor in the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, where he rose to lead the appellate unit before leaving in 1982.

In private practice, he developed a specialty in organized crime and was involved in a 1988 case that helped determine the legal definition of racketeering. His former law partner, Ronald P. Fischetti, estimated they tried nearly 25 cases that involved organized crime in some form or another.

Mr. Pomerantz returned to the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office to head the criminal division between 1997 and 1999, overseeing major securities fraud and organized crime cases, perhaps most prominently against John A. Gotti, the Gambino boss.

He later joined Paul Weiss, one of the best-known law firms in New York, where he defended Robert Torricelli, the New Jersey senator accused of campaign finance violations.

“He worked both sides of the street, so he’s not going to be biased by virtue of temperament,” said Robert S. Litt, a former general counsel for the Director of National Intelligence, who has known Mr. Pomerantz since 1976.

 

William K. Rashbaum is a senior writer on the Metro desk, where he covers political and municipal corruption, courts, terrorism and broader law enforcement topics. He was a part of the team awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news. @WRashbaum • Facebook

Ben Protess covers the Trump administration, including its overhaul of Obama-era regulations and potential conflicts of interest arising out of the president's personal business dealings. He previously covered white-collar crime, Wall Street lobbying and the private equity industry. @benprotess

Jonah Engel Bromwich is a courts reporter for The New York Times metro desk. @jonesieman

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TwiceHorn

TwiceHorn 31283

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Posted (edited)
7 hours ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

The hiring of an outsider is a highly unusual move for a prosecutor’s office, but the two-and-a-half-year investigation of the former president and his family business is unusually complex. And Mr. Vance, whose office has had a few missteps in other white-collar cases, had already hired FTI, a large consulting company, to help analyze Mr. Trump’s financial records.

 

That's good shit.  I think Vance is quite a bit of a political hack, but this is srs business and not just a "look at me" from him.

Also, it appears that the Supreme Court, if it has any cert petitions from the tax cases, needs to go ahead and deny them because it's just another discovery dispute now.

Edited by TwiceHorn
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NorthTexasCougar

NorthTexasCougar 54

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5 hours ago, DigglerontheHoof said:

All a waste of time.  He'll slime his way out of all of it, as usual.  Hell, I bet the SCOTUS never lets his tax returns get released to anyone. 

Sadly, this.   He's shady as hell but he's the prime example of wealth placing an individual above the law and shielding from consequences.  

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TwiceHorn

TwiceHorn 31283

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He has mostly escaped "civil" comeuppance by doing what he's good at, flooding the channel with bullshit and making his adversaries and allies hate their lives.

He hasn't yet been subjected to criminal comeuppance.  I'm not sure his usual tactics will work so well there.

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wildcat09

wildcat09 29258

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6 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

That's good shit.  I think Vance is quite a bit of a political hack, but this is srs business and not just a "look at me" from him.

Also, it appears that the Supreme Court, if it has any cert petitions from the tax cases, needs to go ahead and deny them because it's just another discovery dispute now.

Vance is trying to make sure everyone forgets that he took a bribe from the junior Trumps.

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FondrenRoad

FondrenRoad 4378

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10 hours ago, DigglerontheHoof said:

All a waste of time.  He'll slime his way out of all of it, as usual.  Hell, I bet the SCOTUS never lets his tax returns get released to anyone. 

The fact that nobody at the IRS with access has ever leaked his tax returns kind of puts the whole evil deep state argument to bed. Hell, maybe he never filed them at all and that's the problem. Nothing to leak. 

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wildcat09

wildcat09 29258

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14 minutes ago, FondrenRoad said:

The fact that nobody at the IRS with access has ever leaked his tax returns kind of puts the whole evil deep state argument to bed. Hell, maybe he never filed them at all and that's the problem. Nothing to leak. 

I always assumed it was someone at the IRS that leaked them to the Times. Did I miss something with that story? Was it ever confirmed to have been someone else?

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RomaVicta

RomaVicta 29794

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2 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

why would an innocent man fight so hard to hide evidence ?

To protect the rights of other innocent defendants subjected to witch hunts. Duh! 

Donald cares about the people. People walk up to him all the time. Strong people with hairy arms and Harley Davidson jackets and tears streaming down their manly, manful cheeks as they praise him as a man of the people like we haven't seen before.

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406W30th

406W30th 1111

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25 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

huh?

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-ivanka-trump-and-donald-trump-jr-avoided-a-criminal-indictment

Quote

In the spring of 2012, Donald Trump’s two eldest children, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump, Jr., found themselves in a precarious legal position. For two years, prosecutors in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office had been building a criminal case against them for misleading prospective buyers of units in the Trump SoHo, a hotel and condo development that was failing to sell. Despite the best efforts of the siblings’ defense team, the case had not gone away. An indictment seemed like a real possibility. The evidence included e-mails from the Trumps making clear that they were aware they were using inflated figures about how well the condos were selling to lure buyers.

But, in 2012, Kasowitz donated twenty-five thousand dollars to the reëlection campaign of the Manhattan District Attorney, Cyrus Vance, Jr., making Kasowitz one of Vance’s largest donors. Kasowitz decided to bypass the lower-level prosecutors and went directly to Vance to ask that the investigation be dropped.

 

Obviously this case is considerably higher profile, and Vance looks to be releasing the hounds, but it's fair to be skeptical given Trump's history.

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Mdhorn

Mdhorn 5911

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^^^  According to his since-pardoned federal indictment, Bannon and his co-defendants used cash raked in through the “We Build the Wall” campaign to cover hundreds of thousands of dollars in personal expenses, like credit card debt.

Bannon has denied any wrongdoing and was awaiting trial at the time of his pardon.

However, the Supreme Court has held that accepting a pardon is an admission of guilt — a finding that could complicate matters for Bannon if he ends up being indicted by Vance.

 

Just ho hum, another corrupt, Trump accomplice. 

 

 

 

Edited by Mdhorn
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henrygandorf

henrygandorf 29178

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22 minutes ago, ChiTownDoc said:

Predicting that this ends up my favorite thread in the CR.  I've got shitloads of bourbon and popcorn.  LFG

please please this.

i also hope that at the end of all of this, trump realizes that he would've gotten away with all of this no problem, if he hadn't decided to run for president.

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MaybeACoordinator

MaybeACoordinator 8349

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3 hours ago, henrygandorf said:

please please this.

i also hope that at the end of all of this, trump realizes that he would've gotten away with all of this no problem, if he hadn't decided to run for president.

There is a school of thought dating back to 2015 that Trump sensed the walls closing in back then and the sole reason he ran for president was so he could later portray all attacks on him as politically motivated. 

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RomaVicta

RomaVicta 29794

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4 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

There is a school of thought dating back to 2015 that Trump sensed the walls closing in back then and the sole reason he ran for president was so he could later portray all attacks on him as politically motivated. 

It is interesting to me that news outlets more regularly identify public officials' political party than they used to. I think this may be due to the constant whining by GOPs whenever someone prosecuting them is not another GOP.

It's a party strategy to constantly claim victimhood as they themselves victimize people. Just another facet of deceit.

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TwiceHorn

TwiceHorn 31283

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4 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

There is a school of thought dating back to 2015 that Trump sensed the walls closing in back then and the sole reason he ran for president was so he could later portray all attacks on him as politically motivated. 

The statute of limitations on a lot of offenses is 5 years, 10 years at the most for a financial type crime.  Getting 4 (or 😎 years to run on the statute could be a big advantage.

Which is why I think the necessary corollary to not being able to charge and try a sitting President is that the statute of limitations should be tolled (not run) while in office. 

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Biff Tannen

Biff Tannen 45499

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4 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

I’m too jaded to get excited about any of this. I myself am an eyewitness to crimes committed by these people because they did a lot of crimes in broad daylight, yet no one wants to bring an indictment. 

This.  I have almost zero hope anything significant will come of any of this.  Maybe a couple of lackeys go down.  The big fish will skate or die.

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Mdhorn

Mdhorn 5911

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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Biff Tannen said:

This.  I have almost zero hope anything significant will come of any of this.  Maybe a couple of lackeys go down.  The big fish will skate or die.

Even so--associations with Trump and his brand are toxic and that thrills me. If he has to fight to reside in NY, Florida and everywhere else, he has no peace which is what he offered others.  And if he has no cover, then maybe his operations get whittled away bit by bit--madness by a thousand cuts.  

Edited by Mdhorn
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FondrenRoad

FondrenRoad 4378

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1 hour ago, Biff Tannen said:

This.  I have almost zero hope anything significant will come of any of this.  Maybe a couple of lackeys go down.  The big fish will skate or die.

Yep. The Trump Tower janitor and doorman better watch their cornholes.  They are about to get fucked. 

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TwiceHorn

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9 minutes ago, Mdhorn said:

Even so--associations with Trump and his brand are toxic and that thrills me. If he has to fight to reside in NY, Florida and everywhere else, he has no peace which is what he offered others.  And if he has no cover, then maybe his operations get whittled away bit by bit--madness by a thousand cuts.  

Well, it would seem to have become toxic to approximately 81 million people and as powerful as ever before to 74 million.

I'm not sure it had much cachet with intelligent, discerning people before.  But we shall see.

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RPM

RPM 26230

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

I’m too jaded to get excited about any of this. I myself am an eyewitness to crimes committed by these people because they did a lot of crimes in broad daylight, yet no one wants to bring an indictment. 

I can't really disagree with Hugo, but we are working state level here. NY loathes Trump enough to make something stick. 

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BrickHorn

BrickHorn 18194

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53 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Well, it would seem to have become toxic to approximately 81 million people and as powerful as ever before to 74 million.

I'm not sure it had much cachet with intelligent, discerning people before.  But we shall see.

This. The idea that Trump is some kind of luxury brand that appeals to sophisticated consumers is completely orthogonal to reality. The rich and famous aren’t dining on frozen steaks and bottled tap water. Trump is and always has been a brand that peddles a thin veneer of fake luxury to schmucks. 

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Js1

Js1 85112

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1 minute ago, BrickHorn said:

This. The idea that Trump is some kind of luxury brand that appeals to sophisticated consumers is completely orthogonal to reality. The rich and famous aren’t dining on frozen steaks and bottled tap water. Trump is and always has been a brand that peddles a thin veneer of fake luxury to schmucks. 

*Overpriced* fake luxury.  Ain't gonna make money without the markup. 

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RomaVicta

RomaVicta 29794

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Trump isn't president anymore. It was enormously difficult to move against him or anybody associated with him while he held presidential power that he delighted in abusing.

He's played a shell game with the evidence against him for misdeeds done prior to taking office. That game is over as far as his accounting evasions and fraud. 

His co-conspirators face criminal action for fraud and other crimes coordinated with international financial criminals and Russian mobsters. Trump's accounting firm appeared terrified when the light was shone on them so many months ago.

Prosecutors can make careers out of nailing the Trump crime family. 

I don't get the pessimistic resignation. The wall was just breached. I think the number of cops and prosecutors and angry powerful people willing to rush that breach is large.

We're not the only ones pissed off that he tried to overthrow the shreds of our democracy. 

I think the jaws of the legal system will close upon Donald Trump. Hell, the insurrection investigation doesn't bode well for him either.

I'm not guaranteeing that he'll fry, but this is the best shot and the one we've waited for.

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MoJames

MoJames 8241

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7 minutes ago, BrickHorn said:

This. The idea that Trump is some kind of luxury brand that appeals to sophisticated consumers is completely orthogonal to reality. The rich and famous aren’t dining on frozen steaks and bottled tap water. Trump is and always has been a brand that peddles a thin veneer of fake luxury to schmucks. 

vJ3oBX.gif

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DigglerontheHoof

DigglerontheHoof 21065

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On 2/25/2021 at 11:32 AM, RomaVicta said:

Trump isn't president anymore. It was enormously difficult to move against him or anybody associated with him while he held presidential power that he delighted in abusing.

He's played a shell game with the evidence against him for misdeeds done prior to taking office. That game is over as far as his accounting evasions and fraud. 

His co-conspirators face criminal action for fraud and other crimes coordinated with international financial criminals and Russian mobsters. Trump's accounting firm appeared terrified when the light was shone on them so many months ago.

Prosecutors can make careers out of nailing the Trump crime family. 

I don't get the pessimistic resignation. The wall was just breached. I think the number of cops and prosecutors and angry powerful people willing to rush that breach is large.

We're not the only ones pissed off that he tried to overthrow the shreds of our democracy. 

I think the jaws of the legal system will close upon Donald Trump. Hell, the insurrection investigation doesn't bode well for him either.

I'm not guaranteeing that he'll fry, but this is the best shot and the one we've waited for.

Try to seat a jury of 12 w/out at least 1 trumpkin on it.  You can't.  That fat fuck will never spend a day in jail; I think that's where you see the pessimistic resignation coming from. 

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