Manhattan prosecutors may be in final stage of Trump investigation

• Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr.’s investigation into Donald Trump’s finances is heating up.
• Vance already has Trump’s taxes and recently hired a top attorney.
• Some DOJ veterans expect potential charges before the end of the year, when Vance retires.
• See more stories on the Insider business page.

After a months-long battle with Donald Trump over his tightly-held tax returns, the Manhattan district attorney’s office may finally be at the last stage of its broad investigation into the former president’s financial dealings.

Trump has repeatedly refused to release his tax returns. But in February, prosecutors won a major victory when the Supreme Court forced Trump to turn over thousands of pages of his financial information to the prosecutor’s office.

The DA investigation examines whether Trump or his companies falsely declared property values ​​for tax and loan purposes, which would violate New York law. In the weeks since prosecutors obtained his financial records, the investigation has escalated significantly, according to media and two former prosecutors who spoke to Insider.

“They’re serious now,” a source told Jane Mayer of The New Yorker. The person believed the investigation by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. had stalled while Trump was in office and prosecutors waged a court battle to get his taxes. But now, the source told Mayer, prosecutors’ questions have gotten “very pointed – they are now spinning with a laser beam.”

“It hit me,” the person added. “They are closer.”

The clues are there. Vance announced on Friday that he would not be running for office. The move was widely anticipated, as Vance, who had served as DA since 2010, did not raise funds until this summer’s primary. His last day will be in December, and a former senior deputy told Insider he believes Vance would want to make impeachment rulings before he leaves.

“Vance launched the investigation,” Daniel Alonso, now a partner at Buckley LLP, told Insider. “I’m sure he’s in an absolute rush to have a decision made on whether to prosecute anyone, who to sue and for what charges, by the end of the year.”

Jeffrey Cramer, a longtime former federal prosecutor who spent 12 years at the Department of Justice, echoed this view and told Insider it was no surprise that the pace of the investigation was picking up. or accelerated after the Supreme Court’s decision.

“You need documents and tax records to prove these cases. This is how they go up and down,” he said. “It’s not testimonials and emails; these things give money context. But this case is about tracking money, so it comes down to tax records, to which prosecutors now have full access.”

Representatives for Trump and the Trump organization did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment on this story.

Vance recruited a seasoned prosecutor who worked on organized crime cases

Vance is likely personally involved in the details of the Trump investigation, according to Alonso. Eight candidates are vying for his successor, however, and Alonso said there was “a significant concern” in the New York legal community that not all were “qualified to oversee a case of this magnitude.”

While virtually all of the candidates have criticized Trump at one point or another, they have mostly focused on local affairs in their campaigns. At a candidates’ forum in January, they argued over how they were going to handle the Trump affair and largely avoided injecting political considerations into it.

In the meantime, Vance has put together a seasoned team of white-collar prosecutors, including several of his own senior officials. He also made the unusual decision in February to hire Mark Pomerantz, a former federal prosecutor who worked on organized crime cases before joining the law firm Paul, Weiss as a criminal defense attorney in col White.

“The team was in very good shape,” Alonso said of Vance’s office. “But the fact that Pomerantz has agreed to intervene in the matter seems to me an indication that there is definitely something substantial to investigate.”

ProPublica reported in October 2019 that documents showed Trump appeared to keep two books of account for his properties, suggesting potential financial fraud.

In November 2019, Mother Jones released an investigation that found Trump could have fabricated a loan to avoid paying $ 50 million in income taxes. And the New York Times reported in 2018 that Trump used a series of questionable tax schemes to protect a $ 413 million IRS legacy.

In 2019, an IRS whistleblower came forward and alleged that there were “inappropriate efforts to influence” the agency’s mandatory tax audit of Trump. And late last year, The Times published yet another explosive investigation showing Trump only paid $ 750 in income tax in 2016 and 2017.

Chris Hondros / Getty Images

Cramer pointed to Pomerantz’s previous experience in prosecuting organized crime cases – he secured the 1999 conviction of the son of Mafia boss John Gotti – and said it could prove particularly useful for the office of Vance as he examines the Trump organization.

“Obviously, Trump was not leading an organized crime team. But there are some similarities, depending on how the company, which is the Trump organization in this case, was structured,” Cramer said.

He noted, however, that Pomerantz’s main value probably lies in his experience in the private sector.

“If you look at one of the good defense lawyers in the country, most of them are former prosecutors,” Cramer said. “Prosecutors make good defense lawyers because they know both sides of the case. They can wear different hats and that is essential to help build a strong case.”

That said, Alonso warned that Vance could choose not to lay charges against Trump at all.

“In accounting fraud investigations, prosecutors generally suspect, and might even believe, that the CEO has the knowledge and intent, but cannot always prove it,” Alonso said.

The precise scope of Vance’s investigation is unclear, but court documents suggest the office could examine whether Trump and the Trump organization violated New York state tax laws by manipulating property values to obtain favorable tax rates and loan terms.

TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP via Getty Images

Now that the Supreme Court has cleared the way for prosecutors to obtain taxes from Trump, investigators have access to a potential treasure trove of information about the complex world of Trump’s business operations.

The tax returns themselves, as well as the communications about them, are at the very heart of the investigation. Vance hired FTI, an forensic accounting firm, to help review the data. Alonso said it could take a while.

“In the main part of the investigation, which deals with valuations and possible tax, banking and insurance fraud, from what we know from the public records, they have to analyze the millions of pages of documents that ‘they recovered from Mazars, “Alonso said, referring to Trump’s accounting firm.” It’s not something that happens overnight. “

At the end of the investigation, Alonso said, prosecutors will have a number of avenues to choose from depending on what they find.

“They may be billing the Trump organization itself or one of its affiliates,” he said. “They might charge CFO Allen Weisselberg if he doesn’t cooperate. They might charge one of the Trump kids who helps run the business. Or maybe they charge a other leader. Or it could be no one at the end of the day. “

“If they can’t prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt, they shouldn’t charge,” he added.

“ You better get yourself some good avocados ”

In other parts of the investigation, prosecutors appear to dot I’s and cross T’s.

Ralph Mastromonaco, an engineer who worked on Trump’s estate in Seven Springs in upstate New York – whose assessment is under scrutiny by prosecutors, according to the Wall Street Journal – has been subpoenaed by Manhattan prosecutors in recent weeks. But he told Insider that everything he provided to prosecutors was already on the public record and filed with the local Township of Bedford.

John Dean, the former White House attorney for President Richard Nixon whose testimony on the Watergate scandal led to Nixon’s resignation, said on Friday he believed Vance’s office could lay charges against Trump in just a few days.

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Dean based his observation on a Reuters report that former Trump attorney and fixer Michael Cohen was to meet with Manhattan prosecutors for the seventh time.

Cohen has pleaded guilty to several crimes resulting from investigations into Trump by the Manhattan Office of the Attorney General and Special Counsel Robert Mueller. He testified to Congress in 2019 that Trump repeatedly inflated or deflated the value of his assets for loan and tax purposes, respectively, and he cooperated extensively with prosecutors.

In a Friday morning tweet, Dean wrote that based on “personal experience as a key witness, I assure you you don’t go to the DA seven times if he doesn’t plan to charge those you are aware of. It is just a matter of how many days before DA Vance charges Donald & Co. “

Cramer stressed that the precise timing of the prosecutor’s investigation was still difficult to assess.

“But when the Manhattan DA’s office has your tax returns and they bring in rental guns like Pomerantz who specialize in this type of work,” he said, “you better get good lawyers ”.