The pressure on the Trump team just keeps piling up. This week, as they continue to deal with ongoing developments in the Russia scandal, ABC reported that prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York had moved to subpoena documents from the Trump inauguration committee. To be more specific, this Monday afternoon, authorities asked lawyers representing the committee about their capability to respond to a subpoena — and then Monday evening, the subpoena dropped.
Authorities sought a wide range of documents covering “all of the committee’s donors and event attendees, any benefits handed out including tickets and photo opportunities with the president, federal disclosure filings, vendors, contracts, and more,” according to The New York Times.
The inauguration committee has come under scrutiny multiple times already for issues ranging from possible corrupt foreign involvement to even boatloads of cash that flowed right into the president’s own businesses. The president’s own daughter and adviser Ivanka got in on the latter development, pushing for the inauguration committee to pay sky-high rental rates to use Trump-branded property. They eventually dished out a whopping over $1.5 million at just his D.C. hotel. Those expenses came alongside other suspicious ones, like $1.62 million that went directly to First Lady Melania Trump’s close friend Stephanie Winston-Wolkoff for event planning. Nearly $26 million went to her firm, while nearly $2.7 million went to eventual Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale’s company that handled digital operations for the event, among other steep price tags.
In other words, they were just spreading their millions among themselves — and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Authorities have also been looking into donors with ties to Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar who helped contribute to the committee’s record cash haul. It handled some $107 million, which is about double the amount of money that the inauguration committee for Barack Obama’s first term dealt with — and above the amount raised by any other presidential inauguration committee in modern history.
We don’t yet know the full scope of possible foreign involvement in that effort to get some of the super rich around patting each other on the back — Special Counsel for the Russia investigation Robert Mueller might, however. His office has interviewed longtime Trump friend Tom Barrack, who chaired the inauguration committee, and they’ve also reportedly asked relevant witnesses about those donors with those suspicious foreign ties.
Both former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and longtime Chief Financial Officer for the Trump Organization Allen Weisselberg have cooperated with New York authorities — and it’s clear they take the Trump team’s activities seriously. They pushed for the eventual three year jail sentence Cohen got slapped with recently over crimes including tax fraud, bank fraud, and campaign finance law violations in which he implicated the president.
On top of these points, we know that the Trump inauguration has warranted suspicion — and not just because of the “alternative fact” that it was the most-attended presidential inauguration ever. Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg — who’s since been sanctioned — was even among those in attendance at Trump’s inauguration.
These issues could prolong legal headaches for the Trump team well beyond the end of Mueller’s investigation — and even beyond the end of Trump’s presidency.
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