Prosecutors hint at investigation into ‘extensive criminal conduct at Trump organization’
The Manhattan prosecutor’s office trying to get President Donald Trump’s tax returns hinted at a possible investigation into ‘extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization.’
New York County prosecutors made the statement to a judge while justifying their request for the president’s financial documents and cited potential fraud allegations detailed in the media over recent years as evidence.
The statement on Monday was a response to a Trump’s lawyers, who said the grand jury subpoena for the tax returns was issued in bad faith and amounted to harassment of the president. However, prosecutors said news reports about Trump’s financial history provide enough justification for the information requested.
Manhattan District Attorney District Attorney Cyrus R Vance, Jr. is seeking eight years of the Republican president’s personal and corporate tax records, but has revealed little about what prompted him to request the records, other than part of the investigation is related to payoffs made to women to keep them quiet about alleged affairs with Trump.
Monday’s court filing suggests that the Trump Organization may potentially be under investigation for insurance and bank fraud.
The filing cited a previous court ruling that noted the ‘investigation may result in “a favorable outcome…substantially related to (,)” among other things, “alleged insurance and bank fraud by the Trump Organization and its officers.”‘
Vance’s office was already known to be seeking Trump’s financial records from the accounting firm Mazars USA in connection with a probe into how the president’s company accounted for hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels and model Karen McDougal, who both claimed to have had sex with Trump, although the president has denied the allegations.
In their court filing Monday, though, attorneys for Vance said Trump’s arguments that the subpoena was too broad stemmed from ‘the false premise’ that the probe was limited to so-called ‘hush-money’ payments, further suggesting the possibility of an investigation into the Trump Organization’s financial dealings.
‘This Court is already aware that this assertion is fatally undermined by undisputed information in the public record,’ Vance’s lawyers wrote.
They said public reporting demonstrates that at the time the subpoena was issued ‘there were public allegations of possible criminal activity at Plaintiff’s New York County-based Trump Organization dating back over a decade.’
‘These reports describe transactions involving individual and corporate actors based in New York County, but whose conduct at times extended beyond New York’s borders. This possible criminal activity occurred within the applicable statutes of limitations, particularly if the transactions involved a continuing pattern of conduct,’ the lawyers said.
The lawyers urged Judge Victor Marrero to swiftly reject Trump’s arguments, saying the baseless claims were threatening the investigation. Marrero, who ruled against Trump last year, has scheduled arguments to be fully submitted by mid-August.
Last month, the Supreme Court rejected claims by Trump’s lawyers that the president could not be criminally investigated while he was in office.
Vance sought the tax records in part for a probe of how Trump’s then-personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, arranged during the 2016 presidential race to keep Daniels and McDougal from airing claims of extramarital affairs with Trump. Trump has denied the affairs.
Cohen is serving the last two years of a three-year prison sentence in home confinement after pleading guilty to campaign finance violations and lying to Congress, among other charges.
He also said he plans to publish a book critical of the president before the November election.
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