Did Mazars just turn state’s evidence against Donald Trump?
Yesterday we all learned that the Mazars accounting firm has dumped its longtime client the Trump Organization, citing a conflict of interest, and making clear that Donald Trump’s past decade of financial statements should now be considered unreliable. So what’s going on? How we all came to learn about it may be the biggest clue.
The Mazars letter to the Trump Organization is dated February 9th – the middle of last week. On February 14th, just five days later, New York Attorney General Letitia James included a copy of the letter in a court filing. This almost certainly means that Mazars provided James with a copy of the letter when it sent the letter to the Trump Organization last week. In other words, Mazars appears to be working with New York against Trump.
Numerous observers are asking whether Mazars has criminal exposure here. How could a major accounting firm go a decade or more without figuring out that one of its most notorious clients was fudging the numbers? This could explain why Mazars appears to be working with prosecutors.
Former prosecutor Richard Signorelli tweeted his suspicion that “something is going on behind the scenes of the prosecution,” adding that Mazars accountants could be “turning state’s evidence” against Trump world. Of course the real question is why this move is happening right now, and what it signals is coming next.
This Mazars letter significantly bolsters not only the civil probe that the New York Attorney General is running into the Trump Organization, but also the related criminal case that the New York Attorney General and the Manhattan District Attorney are jointly running into Donald Trump himself. Signorelli may be onto something when he suggests that this letter and court filing could be intended to clear the way for criminal charges against Donald Trump. Stay tuned – something was just set in motion.
