Is Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Ready to Indict Donald Trump?

[ad_1]

Minutes after a New York judge ordered the Trump Organization to pay $1.6 million for criminal tax evasion on Friday, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg held a press conference.

It was short two minutes, to be exact, but Bragg was still able to bask in the glory of his office’s hard-fought victory against Donald Trump’s family company. And he was able to tease her next move.

Bragg congratulated his team on successfully prosecuting two Trump companies and sending its top accountant to prison, noting how the win closes an important chapter in our ongoing investigation into the former president and his business.

Let’s move on to the next chapter, he continued.

To many, Bragg appeared ready to finally set his sights on former President Donald Trump nearly a year after making the disastrous decision not to indict him for fear of losing in court, a move that sapped the morale of the investigative team. and caused its top two prosecutors. who quit in protest.

But Bragg may have finally changed his mind.

The recent trial offers a preview of damning evidence that directly links Trump to the crime. First, there’s the memo Trump signed approving chief operating officer Matthew Calamars’ blatantly illegal request in 2012 to cut his taxable salary by $72,000 to cover the cost of his untaxed high-end corporate apartment. Add to that the fact that Trump, in a separate legal battle in New York in 2021, asserted under oath that he personally handled the Calamaris compensation.

Second, there were checks signed by Trump to cover expensive tuition at a private school for the grandchildren of chief financial officer Allen Weisselbergs. Add to that Weisselbergs’ trial testimony, in which he recalled being in Trump’s office a decade ago when he promised to pay it back in a vow he kept when he paid off the company by also lowering his salary taxes.

Third, there’s the star witness who was never used in the Trump corporate trial: Jennifer Weisselberg, the divorced mother of two who is currently fighting for custody of her children, whose school tuition Trump covered. Jennifer Weisselberg has repeatedly told prosecutors that she was in the room with Trump himself when he discussed the executive compensation scheme that artificially lowered taxable salaries on the books.

Then again, the next chapter could be another criminal case. This investigation began under the previous district attorney, Cy Vance Jr., as a look into the Trumps hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels that were laundered through his company to hide whether what are the clear 2016 presidential campaign expenses to avoid a public relations disaster.

This case has tentacles, said Duncan Levin, a former prosecutor in that same office who now represents Jennifer Weisselberg and has contacted investigators.

When asked by reporters, the Manhattan District Attorneys Office did not clarify what exactly Bragg meant by the next chapter. But former prosecutors who spent decades in that office say they’ve seen it before, and the natural next step is to finally go after the boss himself.

For those who want a certain result to follow Trumpit gives hope. They will be thorough. I doubt he would have told the next chapter if they weren’t looking, said Catherine A. Christian, who oversees financial fraud investigations as an assistant district attorney there.

This happens all the time with large, complex investigations, he said, recalling how his team worked on major international narcotics cases in stages.

The most famous examples come from the mob takedown in the clichd comparison at this point but still apt, how Trump spent decades running a tax cheating real estate company that falsified business records but kept employees quiet by cultivating a culture of unquestioning loyalty for the man with the name. is embossed on every building he owns.

You start at the bottom and work your way up, says attorney John Moscow, who spent years in the Manhattan DAs Office prosecuting complex financial fraud investigations.

But Manhattan prosecutors pursuing the Trump Corporation and Trump Payroll Corporation are encountering the same problems they encountered during the mob bust, especially what experts say they face when targeting Russian mafia: unwavering loyalty.

During the recent criminal trial against the Trump companies, they were unable to turn the employees against their boss.

The most embarrassing example came when prosecutors tried to prove the company deliberately falsified business records by questioning the company’s controller, Jeffrey S. McConney, on the witness stand, where he played a clueless accountant. . McConney testified that he was unable to identify the most basic tax rules or payroll functions.

On the contrary, he carefully answered every question of the company’s defense lawyers. The difference was so stark that at one point during the trial, Justice Juan Merchan expressed his concern that the state’s witness was actually going out of his way to protect his employer, who pays him nearly half a million dollars a year. .

But as visibly frustrated as prosecutors were about to label McConney a recalcitrant witness, they couldn’t just turn the heat on him. That’s because they built their criminal case against Trump’s companies in part by having him testify before an indicted grand jury, a process that in New York uniquely grants total immunity to a suspect about whatever they discuss during their testimony. McConney was safe once he became a witness, even though he had nothing useful to say at trial.

It’s hard to blame a prosecutor for that. Sometimes you have to give immunity to an undesirable person to go after someone worse for the greater good, for the bigger fish, says Christian.

Meanwhile, Weisselberg didn’t say a word either. Once he changed lawyers and hired former Manhattan prosecutor Nicholas Gravante, he secured a plea deal that allowed him to reduce his sentence at Rikers Island and only admit to his own crimes at trial. His attorney has repeatedly insisted that Weisselberg never testify against anyone whose last name is Trump.

Much of the case against Trump hinges on flipping his lieutenants, said former Manhattan prosecutor Jeff Chabrowe.

They didn’t flip, and they failed, he said of Trump employees and the investigators. They tried to do everything they could, and in the end, they got a cut-throat thing here where they went after the organization and Weisselberg. And it has a fine that is quite weak.

Several former prosecutors have expressed dismay at Braggs’ reluctance to indict Trump, questioning why his team hasn’t done so yet.

“I have a hard time seeing why they’re charging Allen Weisselberg and not Trump and not somebody else,” Levin said. The only critical difference is that one of them is the president of the United States.

One former prosecutor lamented how the current iteration of that office does not retain the aggressive culture it was known for. It’s an ethos embodied in a kind of wisecracka mantra in the office, if you will that prosecutors say to push the fear that accompanies taking on cases that the DA’s office might lose: Fuck em if they cant take a joke.

But the former assistant district attorneys also left open the possibility that the Braggs next chapter has as much hope to fulfill as the final episode of George RR Martins’ Game of Thrones.

Bragg was probably confused about how much publicity he got about it. He was hailed as one of the first major victories against Trump, when in fact it was really a small version of what it should have been, Chabrowe said. He first gave blood to Trump, and he’ll stop while he’s ahead.

If he goes to Trump, he will, he added.

Whatever Bragg does, he’ll probably have to make a decision soon as hell if he wants to stay relevant. Trump simultaneously faces accusations from separate, more advanced investigations that threaten to derail his 2024 presidential campaign.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is investigating how Trump intimidated an election official in Georgia, and Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith is investigating whether Trump broke the law by spreading the Big Lie and storage of classified documents after leaving the White House. Whoever blows first wins.

Bragg was competing with other, more resourceful prosecutors, Chabrowe told The Daily Beast. Trump has obviously been successful in avoiding prosecutions so far from criminal, civil. I think he’s coming down. But Bragg, who has had a lot of negative publicity and doesn’t have the most experienced guys out there, I don’t see them being successful in the end in knocking him out.

[ad_2]