Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr just got really bad news out of New York State
The criminal justice system usually only operates this poetically in the movies. Moments after Paul Manafort got his federal prison sentence effectively doubled to around eight years, the District Attorney for Manhattan announced that Manafort had been indicted on New York state charges. But this wasn’t some convenient timing by a grand jury. This indictment surely came down awhile ago, and was just unsealed today. So what does this have to do with Ivanka Trump? Everything.
Now we know that New York has been secretly obtaining criminal indictments in coordination with Robert Mueller’s federal investigation, and leaving them sealed until the appropriate time. Are we really supposed to believe that New York has only indicted Paul Manafort? Now that we know New York has gone there, there’s almost certainly a whole stack of Trump-related indictments sitting in a vault under seal. This brings us to Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr, and the events of 2012.
In 2017, the New Yorker revealed that Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance nearly indicted Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr for fraud, but then suddenly changed his mind after Donald Trump’s then-attorney began making donations to Vance’s reelection fund. Then a few months ago, the New York Daily News reported that the FBI was investigating whether this qualified as Vance taking a bribe. Now that Vance appears to be in trouble, suddenly he’s helping the Feds by bringing perfectly timed state level charges against Paul Manafort. This tells us he’s surely planning to do the Feds’ bidding against Trump’s kids as well.
Best we can tell, the statute of limitations appears to have expired for the specific charges that Ivanka and Don Jr were nearly indicted on. But if they routinely conduct Trump Organization business in this manner, then they’ve surely done things since that are equally indictable. Being indicted doesn’t mean you’re guilty, but it means you’re in real trouble. Now we know that New York secretly indicted at least one person in Donald Trump’s orbit awhile ago. Do the math.
