New York’s attorney general is suing the Trump Foundation, as well as Donald Trump and his children, alleging “extensive and persistent” lawbreaking.
Barbara Underwood said the charitable foundation had engaged in “unlawful political co-ordination” designed to influence the 2016 election.
The lawsuit seeks to dissolve the foundation and $2.8m (£2.1m) in restitution.
Twitter has “Trump Foundation” trending right now and has even created a Twitter Moment for it.
I’m really surprised it took so long. The election year reporting found numerous cases of clear self-dealing, which should have triggered a thorough audit by whatever office in NY handles it.Report
The previous AG was busy being an abusive ass in private and doing stuff that made him look good in public, IMO. We get someone who didn’t get the job for narcissist-skills reasons in there, and suddenly stuff starts to happen.Report
(ie, so busy working at looking good that actual *work* at being good was not happening)Report
White collar crime is really hard to prosecute because your dealing with wealthy, powerful, and influential people with connections. Your also dealing with people that can hire the best defense lawyers possible. Prosecutors like an air tight case. The fact that prosecuted are the President and his family, and whether or not the President can be prosecuted is an open question, makes things even more freight.Report
It’s been noted long ago, but the things Trump squawks the loudest about seem to be the things he has done. Projection writ large. That really might apply here. Also Eric and Ivanka are implicated. From the stuff i’ve skimmed they really had no problem openly emailing to ask for illegal use of charity money. We’ll see more analysis on this of course, but the first pass is that they either had no idea what the actual laws were or assumed they were so far above the law they didn’t even have to try to be covert.
And this isn’t even the lead story today. Gah…..just gah….Report
Given that it’s a civil rather than criminal case, in state court, what are the possible outcomes? The Trumps have to cough up some cash? The Foundation loses its state tax exempt status?Report