District Attorney Plots Potential Team To Investigate Trump Crimes

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According to sources for Fox Business, Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance has discussed the potential creation of a so-called “special task force” to examine issues related to Trump’s “business dealings and how they were accounted for in tax documents and for insurance purposes, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter.” Vance has already been conducting a criminal investigation into the Trump Organization’s business practices. Originally, his investigation hinged on the company’s involvement in an illegal hush money scheme targeting women with whom Trump had affairs, but more recently, details have emerged indicating that he’s been examining other issues, like potential fraud.

Vance’s potential task force “would mean a significant increase in resources and personnel dedicated to the investigation, which has been going on for months,” Fox Business explains, and sources reportedly explained to the outlet that the team “would include lawyers and staffers whose only job would be to investigate Trump’s business dealings.” Besides Vance’s investigation, New York Attorney General Letitia James has been investigating the Trump Organization’s business practices in a civil probe. Specifically, she’s been examining alleged improper adjustments to the valuations of the Trump Organization’s assets. These adjustments, like a strikingly large valuation for a New York property’s so-called conservation easement, would have helped provide the Trump family business with financial perks like tax boons.

According to Fox Business, sources indicate that the prospective task force in Vance’s office “would likely be formed around the time Trump leaves office on Jan. 20 and becomes a private citizen.” Justice Department precedent has largely excluded the possibility of criminal proceedings against Trump while he’s been in office, but he’ll be a private citizen again soon. Theoretically, concern about potential future criminal proceedings over his well-documented shady activities could be helping drive Trump’s maniacal and entirely doomed attempt to stay in power. He might be concerned about potential charges that could be on the horizon.

CNN reported this week that in “moments of deepest denial, Trump has told some advisers that he will refuse to leave the White House on Inauguration Day, only to be walked down from that ledge,” although the possibility of a spectacle along those lines definitely remains. Rumors have also swirled about an imminent announcement of a 2024 Trump presidential run, and last week, Axios reported that Trump is considering “a White House departure on Marine One and final Air Force One flight to Florida for a political rally opposite Joe Biden’s inauguration,” although what exactly that Trump might end up doing remains unclear. What is clear is that, as one Trump adviser put it to CNN, the outgoing president is “throwing a fucking temper tantrum.”