The NY Prosecutor Cyrus Vance isn’t pulling his punches. He’s hired the prosecutor who put John Gotti in prison:
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and a newly hired high-profile litigator interviewed Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, on Thursday, as part of a criminal probe of the former president’s business dealings, said two people familiar with the investigation.
The interview came after Mark Pomerantz, who has extensive experience in white-collar and organized crime cases, joined District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.’s team investigating the Trump family business. Pomerantz started on Feb. 2 as special assistant district attorney, said Danny Frost, a spokesman for Vance.
Pomerantz’s hiring is part of a flurry of recent activity in Vance’s investigation, including the issuance in recent days of roughly a dozen new subpoenas, according to the sources. One of those went to Ladder Capital Finance LLC, a major creditor used by Trump and his company, the Trump Organization, to finance the former president’s commercial real estate holdings, the sources said.
Vance’s office has also conducted interviews with Ladder’s staff, one source familiar with the matter said. Ladder did not reply to requests for comment.
The district attorney’s office has said little publicly about the probe, but noted in court filings that it was focused on “possibly extensive and protracted criminal conduct” at the Trump Organization, including alleged falsification of records, and insurance and tax fraud. It is the only known criminal inquiry into Trump’s business practices.
I have said before that I’m not counting any chickens on this. Prosecuting Trump is fraught with danger and he may have covered his tracks fairly well. They still don’t have the tax returns and they may not get them — the Supreme Court is hedging on the case that’s holding them up. But this hire shows that they are not backing off and may just think they have something incriminating.
I don’t know that it’s possible that Trump could end up in jail. But anything that potentially keeps him from ever running for president again would be a true service to America. Unfortunately, even if he is found to be guilty of various crimes, if he isn’t physically imprisoned I think he could run again and be elected. When he said he could shoot someone on 5th avenue and not lose any voters, he wasn’t kidding.