New York Attorney General Letitia James’s investigation into the Trump Organization is now considered a criminal matter, James’s office said Tuesday night, noting that officials with the former president’s company were recently apprised of the development.
“We have informed the Trump Organization that our investigation into the company is no longer purely civil in nature,” said Fabien Levy, a spokesperson for the attorney general’s office. “We are now actively investigating the Trump Organization in a criminal capacity, along with the Manhattan DA. We have no additional comment at this time.”
The attorney general’s notification to the Trump Organization suggested a cooperative relationship has developed between investigators working for James and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr., whose office has been heading a criminal probe into the company and its officers since 2018. Both officials are Democrats. A person familiar with the matter, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, said the district attorney was not specifically mentioned in James’s letter to Trump’s company.
The attorney general’s decision appears to have increased the legal risk that former president Donald Trump faces in New York, where the parallel investigations run by James and Vance had already delved more deeply into Trump’s byzantine finances than any law enforcement authorities ever had.
Previously, the danger posed by James’s investigation seemed to be merely financial — the kind of lawsuit Trump had faced from New York attorneys general before over his Trump University and his charity. Those cost him money but didn’t threaten his liberty.
Now, however, James could also seek criminal penalties. And she appears to be cooperating with Vance’s office, a move that could allow the two wide-ranging investigations to share data.
[…]
A spokesman for Vance’s office declined to comment. His team obtained Trump’s personal and business tax returns earlier this year and is in the process of an extensive forensic evaluation of those documents and other records obtained over the course of years. The known focus of both state probes applies to business transactions and conduct in the years before Trump became president.
Previously, the investigative team under James was pursuing a strictly civil investigation, which remains active and could still result in a lawsuit against the company and its executives.
Andrew Weissman from the Mueller team had this speculation last night:
I would not be surprised if it has something to do with this:
The Trumps’ propensity to overstate sales led them, as ProPublica, WNYC and the New Yorker reported last year, to be investigated on potential felony fraud charges in one case. Ivanka had announced in June 2008 that 60 percent of the units at the SoHo tower had been bought when in fact 15 percent had, according to an affidavit filed by a Trump partner. The Manhattan district attorney’s office considered charging the Trumps but backed off after a visit from a donor — Trump’s attorney Marc Kasowitz . (The DA, Cyrus Vance , denied he was influenced by the donation but later changed his policy and now refuses donations from lawyers with cases before him.)
That’s from the great WNYC/Pro-Publica podcast called Trump Inc. Read the whole thing to understand just what a gigantic grift they had going. Check this out:
Trump arranged financing — his promised commission: $2.2 million or more — by bringing in investment bank Bear Stearns , which issued the bonds that paid for the Panama project’s construction.
Trump touted himself as a “partner” of the developer. His daughter Ivanka briefly boasted that she had personally sold 40 units. (A broker on the project said he couldn’t remember her selling even one.) Meanwhile, Ivanka told a journalist at the time that “over 90 percent” of the Panama units had sold — and at prices five times as high as comparable buildings. Both statements were untrue.
Not only were the Panama sales figures inflated, but many “purchases” turned out to be an illusion. That was no coincidence. The building’s financing depended on obtaining advance commitments from buyers, often before concrete had started pouring. But in between the sale of the bonds in 2007 and 2013, the year the building went bankrupt, buyers of 458 units in the 1,000-unit building abandoned their purchase contracts. Those buyers forfeited more than $50 million in deposits, and they never took possession of finished units. Given that the “buyers” were often shadowy shell companies or other paper entities, it was nearly impossible to discern who the actual purchasers were, let alone why they backed out.
Trump licensed his name for an initial fee of $1 million. But that was just the beginning of the revenue streams, a lengthy and varied assortment that granted him a piece of everything from sales of apartment units to a cut of minibar sales, and was notable for the myriad ways in which both success and failure triggered payments to him.
Consider the final accounting: In the wake of the project’s bankruptcy, a 50 percent default rate and his company’s expulsion from managing the hotel, Donald Trump walked away with between $30 million and $55 million.
Somehow, I doubt that was the last time they pulled that con. Bears Stern is no longer but his arrangements with all financial institutions are just as shady. How much did he lie to Deutsche Bank?
And by the way, Ivanka is in this stuff up to her neck.