It appears that New York Attoreny Genera Tish James will file civil charges against Donald Trump and his Trump Orgnization….
The AG could settle….
Or?
Go for broke with a trial that would be added Trump’s list of court cases….
With THAT?
Could the civil case provide fresh ammo for the Manhattan DA’s criminal case, or even the Feds and the IRS?
After more than three years spent digging through millions of documents and compiling dozens of hours of depositions, all signs seem to point toward James taking legal action against Trump soon, probably in the next four to six weeks. The attorney general’s press office declined to comment on whether a decision has been made about next steps.
James might first offer Trump and the Trump Organization a settlement deal, though his history suggests there’s little chance he’d accept. The AG’s next move would likely be a massive civil lawsuit. The case would presumably center on allegations that Trump and his company falsely raised or lowered the valuation of real estate holdings in order to obtain loans or reduce tax bills. Trump’s legal team recently filed a motion asking a federal appellate court to “curtail this improperly motivated and unconstitutional abuse of process,” but previous rulings have allowed James to forge ahead. Lawyers for Trump did not respond to requests for comment.
The attorney general checked off one major remaining box in the investigation two weeks ago, when Trump, after fighting through the courts for months, finally sat for a deposition. “Once you’re interviewing the principals, you’ve already arrived at the conclusion that there’s more than enough evidence to build a case and prove that the defendants are liable,” Tristan Snell says. Snell was the prosecutor who, while working for James’s attorney general predecessor, constructed the civil lawsuit against Trump University that led to a $25 million settlement. “Deposing Trump is looking for the icing on the cake,” he says. “This was an attempt to turn a high-percentage case into an even-higher-percentage case.”…
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In addition to assembling its own civil case, James’s office has been assisting in the criminal probe of Trump and the Trump Organization conducted by the Manhattan district attorney. That front seemed to have reached a near dead end last February, when two senior prosecutors quit in protest of what they said was DA Alvin Bragg’s decision not to seek an indictment of Trump on charges of allegedly inflating his assets in financial statements. One large impediment to bringing charges was the refusal of the Trump Organization’s former chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, to implicate his longtime boss. Last week, however, Weisselberg pleaded guilty to 15 felonies, and he is expected to testify in the DA’s criminal fraud case against the Trump Organization, which is scheduled to begin on October 24.