The Russia Investigations and other Trump-related cases

[N.E. Brigand]

David Cay Johnston, a freelance journalist formerly with The New York Times and Reuters and a 2001 Pulitzer Prize winner for his reporting on the U.S. tax code, published a book about Donald Trump's business career in 2016 and was anonymously mailed one page of Trump's 2005 federal tax return in 2017. He made that page public in an infamously overhyped episode of Rachel Maddow's evening program on MSNBC, as parodied here by Stephen Colbert:



As I recall, Johnston speculated on Maddow's program that Trump himself might have mailed that page to him. It seems to have been one of the few years in which Trump paid something like a fair share of his taxes.

I note all of that because Johnston today told a different MSNBC host that he expects Trump to shortly be indicted in New York on state racketeering charges. I'm not going to hold my breath.

That said, to judge from a message that Trump has his spokesperson issue today, something does seem to have rattled the former president. The statement begins, "All the Democrats want to do is put people in jail" and includes a complaint that "DA's" and "AG's" are "out of control." However, the statement also references the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6th insurrection (Trump refers to this body as the "Unselect Committee"), so maybe his concern lies in that direction.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Trump sues NY Attorney General Letitia James, seeking to end probe

Of course, he knows this won't go anywhere; his goal is simply to delay.

[River]

He's using the RNC's money for this, isn't he?

[N.E. Brigand]

Yes, I believe so.

And here's some more news about that case: ABC reports that Donald Trump's two eldest children, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, are filing a motion to quash a subpoena for documents that was issued to them by New York attorney general in that office's civil investigation into the finances of the Trump Organization.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I must admit that I do find the parallel civil and criminal investigations odd, if not troubling.

[N.E. Brigand]

Yes, I believe so.

And here's some more news about that case: ABC reports that Donald Trump's two eldest children, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, are filing a motion to quash a subpoena for documents that was issued to them by New York attorney general in that office's civil investigation into the finances of the Trump Organization.

New York Attorney General Letitia James today asked a court to compel the testimony of Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Ivanka Trump in her office's civil investigation into the Trump Organization, which began in the spring of 2019 after Donald Trump's former lawyer, MIchael Cohen, testified to Congress about the company's financial misdeeds. Among the ineresting items noted in her filing:

1. In some financial reports, the Trump Organization claimed that Trump's apartment was three times larger than it actually was, thus inflating its value by $200 million. The value of another property, at 40 Wall Street, was reported by the Trump Organization simultaneously in some reports as $200 million and in other reports as more than $500 million.

2. During a six-hour deposition in October 2020, Eric Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment rights more than 500 times. (Lawyers for Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump were both present for this deposition.) That's his right, of course.

3. In January 2017, seeking to allay the conerns of Zurich North American, an insurance underwriter, "the Trump Organization's lawyers sought to persuade Zurich that there was no legal impediment to suing a sitting president." That's not a crime, as far as I know, but it does conflict with arguments Trump's lawyers made later!

[N.E. Brigand]

In response to that reporting, Maggie Haberman of the New York Times says that Trump associates have told her over the past year that "if the investigations progressed that he would run for president again". I take that to mean that Trump believes being a political candidate (or the president) will afford him some legal protection.

[RoseMorninStar]

In response to that reporting, Maggie Haberman of the New York Times says that Trump associates have told her over the past year that "if the investigations progressed that he would run for president again". I take that to mean that Trump believes being a political candidate (or the president) will afford him some legal protection.

Or, I'm guessing, a huge platform to air his grievances and ability to frame the narrative to his advantage, also hoping it may deter investigations.

[N.E. Brigand]

In response to that reporting, Maggie Haberman of the New York Times says that Trump associates have told her over the past year that "if the investigations progressed that he would run for president again". I take that to mean that Trump believes being a political candidate (or the president) will afford him some legal protection.

Or, I'm guessing, a huge platform to air his grievances and ability to frame the narrative to his advantage, also hoping it may deter investigations.

Speaking of platforms, Donald Trump gave a speech Saturday in Arizona, and I wonder if the media have swung too far in their coverage decisions. During his 2015-16 candidacy and for much of his presidency, I thought he got far too much attention. But now he may be getting too little, given that even I, who consumes too much media, only heard today that Trump said this on Saturday:

The left is now rationing life-saving therapeutics based on race, discriminating against and denigrating — just denigrating — white people to determine who lives and who dies. If you’re white, you don’t get the vaccine or if you’re white, you don’t get therapeutics. You get it based on race. In fact, in New York state, if you’re white, you have to go to the back of the line to get medical help. Think of it. If you’re white, you go right to the back of the line.

Not only is that not true, it's a spectacularly racist thing to say even by Trump's normal standards.

In the same speech, Trump also seemed to encourage Republicans to cheat in the 2022 and 2024 elections, although he framed it as a tit-for-tat response to supposed cheating by Democrats:

We have more people than they do, but they know politics and they know cheating. I sometimes say, 'Well, would the Republicans ever do what they did?' ... I say if it’s good for [Democrats], why aren’t the Republicans doing the same kind of thing with the ballots? You know, the [mail-in] ballots they used COVID as another method of cheating.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

If (as I think seems likely), Attorney General James succeeds in compelling Trump to testify at a deposition in her civil investigation of the Trump Organization's finances, will he plead the Fifth Amendment, or will his ego prevent him from doing so?

[Jude]

Would it be contrary to protocol to play in court the recording of Trump saying that only mob bosses and people with something to hide ever plead the fifth?

[N.E. Brigand]

Would it be contrary to protocol to play in court the recording of Trump saying that only mob bosses and people with something to hide ever plead the fifth?

I think this would be a deposition conducted in private. If charges are brought, a transcript would probably be available, but it wouldn't be in a public courtroom. Unless Trump's own lawyers were to call him to testify, would there ever be an opportunity for him to take the Fifth in public?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I think what Jude was asking (or at least I interpreted him to be asking) was whether, if Trump takes the Fifth in the deposition and then there are subsequent criminal charges, could the prosecutors comment on the fact that he took the Fifth after previously making the mafia comment. The answer to that is certainly not. Even commenting on the mafia comment without pointing out that he himself took the Fifth would almost certainly be prohibited because the implication would be that he failed testify because he knew he was guilty. That is not allowed. (Or at least, so I understand, not being a criminal law expert.)

[N.E. Brigand]

Ah, thanks for that.

I see that Donald Trump's attorney in the New York investigation appeared on Sean Hannity's show this evening to argue that Trump's lenders knew that he was overstating the value of his properties and were fine with that:

"If you think the Deutsche Banks of the world lend money to anyone without doing their own process and tools and valuation of the assets from the ground up, then you’re doubting a lot of the banks and people that would work with the Trump organization or the Trump family."

[RoseMorninStar]

I see that Donald Trump's attorney in the New York investigation appeared on Sean Hannity's show this evening to argue that Trump's lenders knew that he was overstating the value of his properties and were fine with that:

"If you think the Deutsche Banks of the world lend money to anyone without doing their own process and tools and valuation of the assets from the ground up, then you’re doubting a lot of the banks and people that would work with the Trump organization or the Trump family."

Ah.. so in other-words, it's not the lying that is a problem.. gotcha.

[Frelga]

"then you’re doubting a lot of the banks and people that would work with the Trump organization or the Trump family."

I mean, yes?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

My recollection, which may not be accurate, is that eventually the Deutsche Bank was the only bank willing to work with the Trump Organization.

[RoseMorninStar]

I think your memory is correct V, and I think there were even some odd dealings with Deutsche Bank.

[N.E. Brigand]

Still want to know what Donald Trump said that stopped Anthony Kennedy in his tracks.

(But it was probably not about Deutsche Bank, where Kennedy's son worked for a decade. A Washington Post fact check indicates that the younger Kennedy is very unlikely to have had any connection to loans the bank made to Trump.)

[N.E. Brigand]

Vanity Fair has published a long article based on interviews their reporter Gabriel Sherman conducted with Jerry Falwell Jr., the former president of Liberty University, a prominent evangelical college in Virginia.

It was in that role, as others have noted, that Falwell played what may have been a key role helping Donald Trump become President of the United States, when he unexpectedly endorsed Trump's candidacy in late January 2016 and brought Trump to speak at Liberty U. just ahead of the first Republican primaries. Falwell had previously told Ted Cruz, who had announced his candidacy in a March 2015 event at Liberty University and who has substantial ties to the evangelical community, that Liberty's policies prohibited him from endorsing a candidate. (In December 2016, after he won the presidential election, Trump offered Falwell the Cabinet position of Secretary of Education; Falwell now says he declined the offer because it would have meant a significant pay cut.) As the new article reminds readers, a "January 2016 Des Moines Register poll showed Cruz with a 10-point lead in Iowa and with three times more evangelical support than Trump." But while Cruz won Iowa six days later, it was by only three points. He would go on to place a distant second to Trump in total delegates over the course of the primary season, and quite possibly Trump would have won it all anyway, but many observers feel that the endorsement from Falwell made the womanizing and apparently nonreligious Trump palatable for conservative Christian voters. And winning the delegate count so decisively probably set Trump up to do better in the general election than he otherwise would have.

There's no Trump "case" involved as such, but I'm noting the new article not only for those reasons, but because in the interviews, Falwell tells Sherman that he views his endorsement of Trump as the ultimate cause of his eventual departure from Liberty University following news of a sex scandal. That would be a sex scandal that Donald Trump's attorney, Michael Cohen, helped to cover up: he arranged for certain photos not to be published. The first public inklings of the story only emerged a couple years later. Cohen's assistance came late in 2015, just before Falwell endorsed Trump. But Cohen and Falwell both deny that there was any connection, and it's also turned out that Falwell was already helping Trump at about that time by having an associate get some fake polls published in conservative outlets that made Trump's numbers look better.

And in the interviews with Sherman, Falwell says something to bolster the claim that he didn't endorse Trump as a way of paying Trump back for the services of his fixer:

"Because of my last name, people think I’m a religious person. But I’m not. My goal was to make them realize I was not my dad."

Although if that's the truth, it ought to be almost equally shocking for the evangelicals who were impressed by Falwell's endorsement!

(I did write Sherman with a question about something in the opening paragraphs: Falwell was interviewed at his farm, said to be about 20 miles west of Lynchburg, where Liberty U. is located, and he gestured to an Appalachian peak in the distance and described it as the "tallest mountain in Virginia." Mount Rogers, elevation 5,730 ft. (1,750 m.), the highest summit in the state, is some 120 miles to southwest as the crow flies and even on the clearest possible day likely obscured by other peaks. But Apple Orchard Mountain, elevation 4,224 ft. (1,287 m.), is just some 15 miles north from where Falwell is said to live, and while much lower than Mount Rogers, it is, per Wikipedia, the "most topographically prominent mountain" in Virginia.)