PROSECUTORS ARE LINING UP WITNESSES TO EXPLAIN DONALD TRUMP'S MANY ALLEGED CRIMES TO A JURY
As you’ve probably heard by now, Donald Trump is in a lot of legal trouble, which is unfortunate for him given the fact that legitimate lawyers want nothing to do with him and if it weren’t for the fact that the Republican Party had already decided to let him get away with inciting a violent insurrection, he almost certainly would have been found guilty at his second impeachment trial. (In fact, one of the attorneys on his dream team suggested the Department of Justice should arrest him if they thought he committed a crime.) Currently, the ex-president is the defendant in approximately 29 lawsuits, according to The Washington Post, though likely more worrisome to him are the criminal investigations he’s at the center of, particularly the one being led by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. In the last several months, the D.A. has brought on the attorney who put John Gotti and other white-collar criminals behind bars, has reportedly been working to flip the Trump Organizations longtime CFO, and, most crucially, obtained Trump’s much sought-after tax returns, documents that the Queens-born real estate developer has gone to such extreme lengths to keep secret that some people have gotten the impression they contain extremely incriminating information. Now, Vance’s office has taken the next step in its criminal investigation: finding people who can explain to a jury why Trump is a possible crook.
Reuters reports that investigators are “combing through millions of pages of newly acquired records with an eye toward identifying witnesses who can bring the documents to life for a jury,” according to people familiar with the matter. Some of the individuals expected to testify are already well known and likely include the 45th president’s former fixer, Michael Cohen, who has met with prosectors eight times. (In February 2019, Cohen told lawmakers that Trump regularly inflated and deflated his assets “when it served his purposes,” whether it was to reduce his tax bill or obtain loans. Last year, he said in an interview that Trump should go to prison for 360 years.) In addition, there’s Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization employee who has described himself as Trump‘s “eyes and ears” at the company and would seemingly know if his boss had committed fraud, whether of the bank, insurance, or tax variety. But according to reporters Jason Szep and Peter Eisler, “a growing universe of people, institutions, and agencies are being scrutinized” by Vance’s team. Per Reuters:
Prosecutors are looking to gather information and testimony from bankers, bookkeepers, real estate consultants, and others close to the Trump Organization who could provide insights on its dealings, according to interviews and court filings. The process of identifying all witnesses and targets could take months. “The next phase is identifying targets” for subpoenas and testimony, said one person familiar with the case…. Vance’s investigators need insiders who can provide the narrative behind any conflicting numbers on Trump’s financial records and testify to Trump’s knowledge and intent, said former prosecutors of white-collar fraud cases. “Even in the most heavily document-dependent case, you need witnesses to tell the story,” said Reed Brodsky, a longtime white-collar defense lawyer and former federal prosecutor.
Several potential key figures in Vance’s investigation are current or former employees of outside companies—from financial and real estate consultants to legal advisers—with inside knowledge of Trump’s dealings, according to court filings and the two people familiar with the investigation. Some performed crucial roles for many years, such as Mazars accountant Donald Bender. His signature is on the tax returns of the Donald J. Trump Foundation, which was dissolved in 2018 after a probe by the New York attorney general found that the organization misused charitable funds. Trump was ordered to pay more than $2 million in damages.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/03/donald-trump-criminal-investigation-witnesses
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