The odds on Donald Trump’s criminal indictment
After Googling Vegas odds on new Trump indictments, I was surprised to find none. As a seasoned criminal mentored by con men like Fred Trump, Roy Cohn, and Vladimir Putin, Trump obliterated all precedents as POTUS opening the door for corruption. Now with an ethical Department of Justice under Biden, we can better predict the odds for his indictments. Here is my cheat sheet.
Emoluments Clause violations are rarely tested because Presidents avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Trump violated the Constitution by accepting payments from foreign governments through Trump International Hotel, and by not using a blind trust but instead retaining an interest his businesses. But the Supreme Court dismissed two cases and wiped away appeals in court because Trump was no longer in office. Trump ran out the clock, leaving zero odds of indictment.
The greatest lapse in the Mueller investigation was failure to follow the money even after Deutsche Bank’s anti-money-laundering specialists recommended alerting the U.S. Treasury about Trump and Kushner. Manhattan D.A. Vance who picked up where Mueller left off investigating Trump for tax fraud and falsification of businesses is now in possession of eight years of Trump’s tax returns. Also, Trump’s longtime banker, Rosemary Vrablic, who arranged hundreds of millions of dollars in loans at Deutsche Bank over the years, recently resigned. If she flips on Trump, odds are very good for indictment.
Trump tax records show that he reduced his tax bills from 2010 to 2018 by writing off $26 million in consulting fees. A payment of $747,633 to an unnamed Trump Org. consultant was the exact amount Ivanka declared on her own public filings when she joined the White House in 2017, suggesting she was hired as a consultant on the same hotel deals she helped manage while on Trump Org. payroll. Another investigation is a $2.1 million tax deduction for Trump’s Seven Springs property valuation to claim a conservation easement in 2015 that may have been grossly inflated. Manhattan D.A. is looking to flip Trump Organization CFO, increasing odds of indictment.
Trump campaign finance laws violationsf are corroborated by witness testimony from Michael Cohen and a paper trail of Trump paying hush money to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal before the 2016 presidential election. The payments may have never been discovered had Trump not properly accounted for them in its financials. Odds are good this will be one of the indictments.
Although Trump was impeached a first time for extortion in his Ukraine scandal, but acquitted by the Senate, Trump threatened Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger with “a criminal offense” to extort him into election fraud if he didn’t come up with 11,000 votes to overturn the Georgia election. Now that Fulton County D.A. in Georgia put her criminal case against Trump before a grand jury, odds are good for a criminal felony indictment.
The Senate acquitted Trump of his second impeachment for “incitement and insurrection” on January 6th, but soon-to-be U.S. A.G. Merrick Garland vowed to prosecute, noting that prosecutors had successfully convicted domestic terrorists McVeigh and Nichols under existing laws. Odds are good for indictment.
Chicago native Lorraine Evanoff earned her degree in French from DePaul University then became a Certified Financial Manager. She worked as a finance exec in film production for seven years in Paris, then in Silicon Valley during the dot-com era, and later for various Hollywood production companies, notably as CFO of National Lampoon. She is currently living in Los Angeles with her husband.