As I write this, from the New York Times:
Donald J. Trump’s long-serving chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, surrendered on Thursday to the Manhattan district attorney’s office as he and the Trump Organization prepared to face charges in connection with a tax investigation, people with knowledge of the matter said.
Prosecutors are expected to unseal indictments later on Thursday against Weisselberg and the Trump Organization itself. Those familiar with the investigation expect criminal charges related to unpaid taxes on benefits for the firm’s executives.
No charges against Donald Trump or his family members are expected at this time. Trump characteristically calls the investigation a “witch hunt.”
Mr. Weisselberg, accompanied by his lawyer, Mary E. Mulligan, walked into the Lower Manhattan building that houses the criminal courts and the district attorney’s office about 6:20 a.m. He is expected to appear in court in the afternoon along with representatives of the Trump Organization.
The charges against the Trump Organization and Mr. Weisselberg — whom Mr. Trump once praised for doing “whatever was necessary to protect the bottom line” — emerged from the district attorney’s sweeping inquiry into the business practices of Mr. Trump and his company.
As part of that inquiry, the prosecutors in the office of the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., had been examining whether Mr. Weisselberg failed to pay taxes on valuable benefits he and his family received from Mr. Trump, including private school tuition for at least one of his grandchildren, free apartments and leased cars.
Trump himself facing criminal charges will be the main event. Indictments against Weisselberg and the Trump Organization amount to undercard bouts.
Investigations are ongoing into whether Trump and the Trump Organization manipulated property valuations both for tax and bank loan purposes. Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen attested to that under oath before Congress in 2019. Cohen served prison time over undeclared hush-money payments made on Trump’s behalf during the 2016 presidential campaign to conceal Trump’s affair with adult film star Stormy Daniels. Cohen identified Trump as an unindicted co-conspirator in that federal election law case.
The [Weisselberg] indictment follows months of an increasing pressure campaign on Mr. Weisselberg to offer information that could help that inquiry. Prosecutors had subpoenaed Mr. Weisselberg’s personal tax returns and bank records, reviewed a raft of his financial dealings and questioned his ex-daughter-in-law — all part of an effort to gain his cooperation.
Weisselberg, 73, has been tight-lipped with reporters and has resisted requests to provide evidence against his longtime employer. His indictment increases the pressure on Weisselberg and his family. Both Weisselberg and his wife received a leased Mercedes as Trump Organization perks.
In December 2019, the state of New York closed the Trump Foundation for misuse of funds, forced Trump himself to repay funds he spent on himself, and forced the foundation to disburse remaining funds to eight legitimate charities. The N.Y. attorney general’s office concluded its statement:
Additionally, as part of the settlement, Trump was required to agree to 19 admissions, acknowledging his personal misuse of funds at the Trump Foundation, and agreed to restrictions on future charitable service and ongoing reporting to the Office of the Attorney General, in the event he creates a new charity. The settlement also included mandatory training requirements for Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump, which the three children have already undergone. Finally, the settlement required the Trump Foundation to shutter its doors last December and dissolve under court supervision.
A Pulitzer-winning New York Times expose in October 2018 examined the late Fred Trump’s business dealings. Based on 100,000 pages of documents, the report detailed a history of the Trump Organization manipulating property values and employing tax avoidance schemes that, while they may have been criminal, fell outside the statute of limitations for charging the Trump Organization or Trump père’s surviving children. Donald Trump’s sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, nevertheless retired as a federal appellate judge in Philadelphia in early 2019, ending a pending ethics review into whether she had participated with her siblings in evading inheritance taxes. The New York indictments will be the first criminal charges targeting Trump’s family business.
Trump himself is notoriously scrupulous about not using email that might leave “fingerprint” records tying him to the actions of lieutenants such as Cohen or Weisselberg. Suggestions that “the walls are closing in” on Trump himself are premature. Trump has lived his entire life skirting the law if not publicly flaunting it.
Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s death Wednesday is a reminder that a different justice system exists in this country for elites. Rumsfeld and the Bush administration that employed him were credibly (if informally) accused of committing war crimes for which they faced neither international opprobrium, investigation nor indictment.
Salon’s Paul Rosenberg tweets in response, “Elite impunity is both a cause & consequence of everything from forever wars to mass incarceration to the climate catastrophe & the global resurgence of fascism.”
Wall Street bankers avoided prosecution for bringing the world financial system to its knees and impoverishing their victims in the millions in the wake of the 2008 financial collapse.
“Only one political party was agitating for the violent overthrow of our democracy, and it was the Republican Party. And to this point, they’ve mostly gotten away with it,” writes Kurt Bardella. “Democrats need to stop worrying about hurting GOP feelings and start worrying about what will happen if Republicans believe they can get away with pretty much anything.”
Trump has lived that charmed, elite life for seven-plus decades. Do not hold your breath waiting for him to face the music. In his circles, criminals expect to get away with everything.