Government

House Dems May Dither, But New Yorkers Do Not Play!

Let's count up the pending investigations of all the little Trumpers in Trumpland.

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    (Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)

Robert Mueller’s noping out, Congress and the White House are locked in a protracted stalemate, and Nancy Pelosi is doing … whatever it is Madame Speaker is doing about the Mueller report. Could be impeachment, could be infrastructure week. So now what?

Now, we wait. But while we do that, let’s count up the pending investigations of all the little Trumpers in Trumpland. There are a couple few!

SDNY: The Campaign Finance Pornstar Payoff

Robert Mueller may have decided that Don Jr. doesn’t have the mens rea to commit campaign finance violations (or much of anything, honestly), but the shrinking violets in Geoffrey Berman’s shop are likely to take a much less forgiving attitude. Donald Trump and his large adult son were both wise enough to put their names on the reimbursement checks to Michael Cohen which they paid from the Trump revocable trust while pinky swearing that no such payoff ever took place. If the Trump Organization, say, took the $420,000 of campaign reimbursements as a business expense — that’s $130,000 for Stormy Daniels plus $50,000 for online poll-rigging, doubled to pay Cohen’s New York and federal taxes, and an extra $60,000 on top for being such a good boy — then they may have trouble with the New York tax authorities and the IRS. Okay, not the IRS because … Stephen Mnuchin. But this might account at least in part for Trump’s unwillingness to disclose the Trump Organization’s tax returns for a million prying lawyers and accountants to go over with a fine-tooth comb.

Moreover, the redactions in Michael Cohen’s recently released testimony suggest a pending investigation, presumably by SDNY, of a possible presidential pardon dangled through Rudy Giuliani’s friend Robert Costello. Costello offered to be a conduit to Trumpland after Cohen flipped and terminated the joint defense agreement with the president, even sending him screenshots of text exchanges he had with Giuliani as proof of the president’s continuing affection.

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Or maybe those redactions mean Costello is getting a trophy for his outstanding legal ethics! Shhhh, don’t tell him. It’s a secret!

Trump Foundation

New York Attorney General Letitia James picked right up where Barbara Underwood left off with the Donald J. Trump Foundation. Trump has been accused of improperly taking charitable funds to present giant prop checks at campaign rallies in 2016, using foundation money to purchase portraits of himself and a signed Denver Broncos helmet, and even once in 1989 writing a $7 check to the Boy Scouts to pay his son’s troop registration fee. But now Trump may have a new foundation problem arising out of Michael Cohen’s recent testimony.

As Forbes has long suspected, Cohen confirmed that the $4 million contribution from Vince and Linda McMahon’s WWE to the Trump Foundation in 2007 was actually a payment for Trump’s appearance on the network’s “Battle of the Billionaires.” So Vince and Linda got the tax write off, and Donald avoided the income tax. Allegedly. 

Are you not entertained?

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Trump Inauguration

In 2009, Barack Obama raised $53 million for Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, and U2. In 2017, Trump raised $107 million and treated the crowd to Toby Keith and Jackie Evancho. You do the math. And then let’s count to five, for all the pending inauguration investigations, now that Mueller has closed up shop.

  1. Manhattan US Attorney, which got the party started after seizing a tape from Michael Cohen where the Trump party planner worried that the Trump hotels were gauging them on room rates for inaugural events;
  2. Brooklyn US Attorney, who want to know if there were illegal strawman purchasers of inaugural tickets for foreign buyers, aside from that one who pled guilty already;
  3. New Jersey Attorney General;
  4. DC Attorney General; and
  5. House Judiciary Committee.

Trump PAC

In the scandal supernova that is the Trump administration, you could be forgiven for forgetting that Trump’s Rebuild America Now PAC was the locus of one of Paul Manafort’s more audacious money-making schemes. In fact, Manafort was convicted of lying to Judge Amy Berman Jackson about a payment to his lawyers at WilmerHale by a media buyer using money “overpaid” to it by the Rebuild America Now PAC. If you want to hop down that particular rabbit hole, have at it.

Also, the FEC is wondering just how the PAC managed to whoopsie, forget about a $1 million contribution in 2016, only disclosing it two years later. Did they just find that receipt at the bottom of the purse they wore to hear Big & Rich at the inauguration, or what?

New York Department of Financial Services

After Michael Cohen testified that his boss routinely inflated his assets for insurance purposes, DFS, which oversees the state’s insurance and banking industries, issued a subpoena for Trump’s records to his longtime insurance broker Aon plc. Turns out New York is a lousy place to park all your business records if you’re going to play fast and loose with the books and then run for president. Go know!

Mar-a-Lago

Yesterday the Miami Herald reported that the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section in Washington sent subpoenas this week to the Trump Organization and the Trump Victory Fund, an RNC-linked fundraising committee, for records related to massage parlor entrepreneur Cindy Yang and 11 other individuals. Yang was recently caught flogging package tours to meet the president and his family at their Florida club, and by the strangest coincidence, the FBI just set up a new “international corruption squad” based out of the Miami field office.

The FBI has gone out of its way to announce that Trump and his business are not the targets. But we are old enough to remember an investigation of an Arkansas land deal that wound up with cops examining the president’s genitalia and testing the DNA on an intern’s blue dress. You never know where you might end up once you open your books to the feds!

And Many MOOOOOOOORE …

There are not enough pixels on earth to detail all the Congressional investigations and individual lawsuits and state investigations of hiring undocumented workers in Trumpland going on right now. Even the New York Times seems to be flagging in its coverage, worn down by the sheer deluge. If we had to pick a favorite child, Michael Cohen’s lawsuit against Trump for failing to pay his legal bills as promised — a broken promise which seems to have finally precipitated Cohen flipping on Trump — is truly a thing of beauty. But really, each Trump scandal its own special, unique little Pokestop.

Gotta catch ’em all!

Michael Cohen, Feb. 28 Testimony [House.gov]

Michael Cohen, March 6 Testimony [House.gov]

A Mysterious Payment to Paul Manafort’s Lawyer Reveals a Hidden Chapter of Trump’s 2016 Presidential Campaign [CNBC]

Trump Inaugural Committee Ordered to Hand Over Documents to Federal Investigators [NYT]

NY Agency Issues Subpoena to Trump Organization’s Insurance Broker [NY Law Journal]

Federal prosecutors demand Cindy Yang records from Mar-a-Lago, Trump campaign [Miami Herald]

Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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