by Donald Trump himself is, for the moment, only under criminal investigation, but on Tuesday, for the first time, a jury convicted the Trump Organization as a fraudulent and criminal enterprise.
This was a signature achievement for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. His prosecutors have just thrown the king’s mark off the throne. The $1.6 million fine the company faces is the least of the damages. From now on, criminal convictions will place an indelible asterisk next to Trump’s business name.
This was a signature achievement for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. His prosecutors have just thrown the king’s mark off the throne.
The jury took about 10 hours in less than two days to deliberate and convict the company on all 17 counts of fraud, tax evasion and falsifying business records. Speedy criminal verdicts may reflect the strength of prosecutors’ evidence.
In this case, the former CFO of the Trump Organization, Allen Weisselberg, provided everything that was needed. With serious criminal investigations underway against Trump in Washington, Atlanta and New York, the convictions remind us of the sharpest arrow in a prosecutor’s quiver: taking down the target’s lieutenants.
Success with this starts with serious research groundwork that shows them they face a long time in the clink unless they cooperate against the higher goal.
Weisselberg was a Trump loyalist for more than 50 years, a virtual family “trainee.” He wouldn’t have turned over the state’s evidence unless the Manhattan district attorney’s office had had the right to him.
Loyal to the end, Weisselberg never personally singled out Trump at trial and even cooperated with defense attorneys in denying Trump’s involvement in the fraud. Still, Weisselberg’s testimony was the centerpiece of the condemnation of the Trump Organization because he exposed how he saved the company’s taxes.
For years, the Trump Organization ran a scheme to avoid taxes by compensating top executives off the record. Taxes owed to the people of New York were hidden under the table through unreported profits from luxury apartments and cars and even private school tuition for relatives.
During the trial, the Trump Organization defense was trying to convince jurors that Weisselberg was a lone criminal wolf who concocted the scheme solely for personal gain.
But as an alternate juror said in an interview with The New York Times, the defense strategy failed to convince jurors that “Weisselberg did it for Weisselberg.” In fact, insulting the intelligence of the jury backfired, as it inevitably does. Common sense, always a strength of the jury system, confirmed that a company’s, and not just Weisselberg’s, fiscal liability was diminished when it manipulated the books to reduce its reported payroll.
The jury did not need to affirm Trump’s criminality to convict, but prosecutors in Washington, Fulton County, Georgia and within the Manhattan district attorney’s office are working overtime to build cases that can do just that.
Of course, the jury did not have to guess who the main beneficiary was. Although Trump was not a named defendant, the prosecution did its best to insert Trump into the minds of jurors, arguing in closing arguments that Trump explicitly sanctioned tax fraud and that “this whole narrative that Donald Trump is blissfully ignorant is just not real.” .”
The jury did not need to affirm Trump’s criminality to convict, but prosecutors in Washington, Fulton County, Georgia and within the Manhattan district attorney’s office are working overtime to build cases that can do just that. And this reckoning against Trump’s flagship company will surely embolden them.
Prior to the convictions, Prosecutor Bragg already appeared to be reviving his stalled criminal investigation into Trump personally by hiring Matthew Colangelo, a highly experienced Justice Department attorney and complex white-collar fraud investigator. Before joining the top level of the Justice Department, Colangelo led New York Attorney General Letitia James’ investigation into Trump.
Trump could be forgiven at this point for secretly wondering why he ever ran for president, even as he runs again, motivated in part, it seems, by his prized immunity from prosecution. He got away with questionable financial conduct for years in New York before taking his misconduct to Washington and multiplying it several hundred times.
Throwing himself into the national spotlight, there’s no way his misconduct wouldn’t attract the careful attention of all-star prosecutors.
Trump never admits regret. But those thoughts might be floating through his mind at Mar-a-Lago these days. With the first conviction of his company, they might be keeping him awake, along with the sound of the walls closing.
