New York AG Letitia James has Donald Trump cornered
Yesterday Donald Trump appealed a New York Judge’s ruling that he’s in contempt of court for refusing to cooperate with New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil probe into the Trump Organization. That’s cute, but it’s not going to help Trump any. At this point it likely won’t even delay what’s coming.
For one thing, the New York AG doesn’t necessarily need the documents that Donald Trump is refusing to turn over. Michael Cohen believes he’s already turned over these same exact documents to investigators in multiple probes. If so, then James has surely already gotten ahold of them – and she could be subpoenaing him for these documents just to catch him in the trap of destroying them so she can hit him with criminal charges for obstruction of justice.
The kicker is that Trump has no way to know for sure if James already has the documents in question. He might be getting himself held in contempt of court for nothing. Or, if he does turn over the documents and it turns out James didn’t already have them, then Trump will have helped incriminate the Trump Organization and himself by turning them over.
In any case, CNN reported yesterday that James is nearly done with her investigation. That’s not surprising, given that in these kinds of probes, the “kingpin” is the very last person questioned. James is about to announce her findings and take punitive action with or without Trump’s cooperation. Trump can appeal all he wants. The very best he can hope for is to get the daily $10,000 fines wiped out, which is the least of his problems.
James has already publicly stated, in press releases and court filings, that the Trump Organization has engaged in a consistent pattern of fraud. So that’s going to be her conclusion when she completes her probe. It’s just a matter of how severe of financial penalties she hands out. She’ll probably have grounds to seize the entirety of the Trump Organization’s assets and forcibly shut it down. And as we saw with Trump’s prior failed attempt at preemptively gutting his own Trump Foundation in an effort to keep New York from getting to it, there’s no magic wand that will allow Trump to simply shift assets around so there’s nothing for New York to seize.
The real question is what else Tish James will announce when she reveals the findings and penalties of her civil probe. If she’s going to bring criminal charges against Donald Trump, in lieu of whatever is or isn’t going on with the Manhattan DA, this would be the time for her to make such an announcement. We don’t know what all James has in store for Trump. But we do know that she gave up running for Governor just to stick around as New York Attorney General and finish the job of taking Trump down.
