While unlikely to be found guilty of encouraging an uprising, Donald Trump’s legal troubles won’t go away after his Senate trial: the former U.S. president could soon face criminal charges and also faces multiple civil lawsuits. lawsuits.
Based in his luxurious Florida residence, the former New York real estate mogul has long been the target of numerous civil lawsuits and has an army of attorneys standing by to defend him or attack his opponents.
As a simple citizen, he risks at least one criminal charge, led by Democratic Manhattan prosecutor Cyrus Vance, who has been struggling for months to obtain his tax and bank statements.
The investigation, which initially focused on payments to two alleged Trump lovers before the 2016 presidential election, is now investigating possible tax, banking and insurance fraud.
The Supreme Court ordered Trump to deliver the required documents to the prosecutor in July, but his attorneys questioned the scope of the request in the highest court. The Supreme Court has not yet ruled on this.
Trump has called the investigation “the worst witch hunt in American history.”
Tax or bank fraud
The file, instructed behind closed doors before a grand jury, appears to be making progress despite everything.
According to the American press, Vance’s investigators recently questioned employees of his insurance company, Aon, and of Deutsche Bank, Trump’s financier and his holding company, the Trump Organization.
They also questioned former Trump attorney Michael Cohen in prison after admitting to buying the silence of the former president’s two alleged lovers.
Cohen told a congressional hearing that Trump and his company artificially inflated or reduced the value of their assets to get bank loans or lower their taxes.
New York State Democratic attorney Letitia James is also investigating these allegations. He has already successfully confronted Trump Organization attorneys in order to be able to question a son of Trump, Eric, and obtain documents on a number of family assets. His investigation is civil, but “if we discover criminal facts, it will change its nature,” James said recently.
If accepted, the charges will expose the former president to possible jail time. And unlike federal crimes, violations of state law cannot be forgiven by the US president, even if Joe Biden wanted to do so in the name of reconciliation.
Some of Trump’s critics are celebrating this in advance, such as the militants from “Rise and Resist” (Stand up and Resist) who demonstrated in New York in early January to demand his imprisonment.
But prosecutors, aware of the extremely tense political climate, will think twice about holding him to account, several lawyers told AFP.
“No one is going to rush,” said Daniel Richman, a former prosecutor and professor of law at Columbia University. “The last thing we want is for the (judicial) process to be used, or seen as a political tool,” he stressed. “There are two schools,” said Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer responsible for three civil lawsuits against the former president.
“I come from the school that believes we should not forbid justice being done for fear of adding fuel to the fire: if we don’t act to make it clear that the pillars on which the country rests apply to everyone, president or not, I think we are in much greater danger ”.
Stage a la Al Capone
For Gloria Browne-Marshall, a law professor at the City University of New York (CUNY), Trump in the harbor would be ‘a logical result’, ‘a scenario à la Al Capone’, the legendary 1920s gangster who was eventually convicted in 1931 of tax evasion.
But while you think your indictment is likely before Prosecutor Cyrus Vance’s current term ends in November, I’m not going to bet there will be a trial or a conviction.
USA IN POINTS
Counterattack.
With millions of supporters potentially willing to fund his defense, Trump could fight back with his own lawsuits and keep files dragging “for years,” he said.
Fight.
That would force prosecutors – elected officials who rely on taxpayers’ money – to mobilize significant resources to take the fight, added Gloria Browne-Marshall, a law professor at CUNY.