Here’s the thing about New York State’s new lawsuit against the Trump Foundation
Today the State of New York brought a groundbreaking lawsuit against Donald Trump’s charitable nonprofit organization, the Trump Foundation, which operates in the state. The details of the suit make clear that the state’s investigators have managed to expose even more improprieties – and possible outright felonies – than journalists were able to collectively dig up while looking into the Foundation. One thing about this really stands out to me, and it has a lot to do with the Trump Russia scandal.
New York’s Attorney General Eric Schneiderman was ousted last month after accusations that he was violent toward women. This had major potential ramifications for the Trump Russia investigation. It’s long been widely reported that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been working with the State of New York to bring parallel state level cases against the various participants in the Trump-Russia scandal, as an insurance policy in case Donald Trump tries to fire Mueller, or tries to pardon these participants.
Schneiderman would have had jurisdiction over the state level cases against people like Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and others. His ouster raised questions about what would happen with these potential cases. Palmer Report predicted that due to the split party control over the New York state legislature, and neither party’s ability to do anything that the other party doesn’t like, the most likely outcome would be that one of Schneiderman’s deputies would simply be appointed to take his place. Sure enough, that’s what happened.
Now that Barbara Underwood has become the new Attorney General for New York, we knew she would push forward in trying to help bring Donald Trump to justice. The big question these past weeks has been just how hard she’d be willing to push, considering that she’s new on the job, and that the office is up for reelection in just a few months. Now we have our answer: she’s pushing forward against Trump as aggressively as possible. Unless the NY AG position falls into Republican hands in the November 2018 election, New York State will clearly play a major role in taking Trump down for his Russia scandal and his other scandals.
