Legal woes trail Trump beyond the White House
The district attorney is sifting through millions of pages of his tax records. The state attorney general has subpoenaed his lawyers, his bankers, his chief financial officer – even one of his sons.
And that’s just in New York. Former president Donald Trump is also facing criminal investigations in Georgia and the District of Columbia related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. And Trump must defend himself against a growing raft of lawsuits: 29 are pending at last count, including some seeking damages from Trump’s actions on January 6,when he encouraged a march to the Capitol that ended in a mob storming the building.
No charges have been filed against Trump in any of these investigations. The outcome of these lawsuits is uncertain. Trump has raised more than US$31 million (NZ$43 million) for his post-presidential political action committee, which he could tap to pay legal fees.
But the sheer volume of these legal problems indicates that – after a moment of maximum invincibility in the White House – Trump has fallen to a point of historic vulnerability before the law.
He has lost the formal immunities of the presidency and the legal firepower of the Justice Department, but he is also without some of the informal shields that protected him even before he was president: his reputation for endless wealth and his clout as a political donor in New York.
Now, prosecutors roam free in his financial records. New lawsuits keep arriving. Some of his key lawyers have quit. A man who once used the law to swamp his enemies, overwhelming them with claims and legal bills, is finding himself on the other side of the wave, unable to control what comes next.
Until recently, ‘‘at his level, there was no such thing as being in ‘legal trouble,’ in the way that ordinary people think about it,’’ said Michael D’Antonio, who wrote a 2015 biography of Trump. He said Trump usually had something he could hold over the head of his opponents: withholding donations, bad press or a messy countersuit.
Today, D’Antonio said, in the urban and liberal jurisdictions where Trump is facing the most peril, ‘‘nobody needs him now.’’
‘‘What does he have to offer anybody? And in fact there’s every incentive to crush him,’’ D’Antonio said.
In recent US history, the closest parallel is Bill Clinton. In his post-presidency, Clinton faced a four-year Justice Department investigation into pardons he had granted during his last days in office. That investigation ended with no charges, but – along with congressional investigations of the same pardons – it forced Clinton to pay substantial legal fees.
Trump and his company did not respond to questions for this article. His attorneys have largely declined to comment.
Trump is facing the lawsuits and investigations at a time when his company is under unusual stress, caused by both the coronavirus pandemic and backlash against Trump’s polarising presidency. Several of his hotels and resorts reported sharp downturns in 2020.
At Trump Tower in Manhattan, one major commercial tenant – Tiffany & Co. – is planning to vacate its space. Another, Marc Fisher Footwear, stopped paying rent in November, according to a lawsuit the Trump Organisation filed against the footwear company this month. The company owes more than US$1.4 million in back payments, according to the suit.
The Trump Organisation is a private business, which provides little data about its financial standing. Trump still appears to own the company, but it’s not clear what role he is playing in its day-to-day management. In fact, the lawsuit against Marc Fisher Footwear still lists Eric Trump, his son, as the president of the subsidiary that runs Trump Tower.
The Washington Post identified at least six ongoing investigations that could involve Donald Trump, as well as the 29 lawsuits in which he or one of his companies is named as a defendant. Of the investigations, the oldest and broadest appear to be two in New York: a criminal probe begun by Manhattan Democratic District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr in 2018, and a separate civil inquiry begun by Democratic state Attorney General Letitia James in 2019.
Trump has faced official inquiries in New York before: A previous attorney general, Democrat Eric Schneiderman, sued him for defrauding customers of Trump University, winning a US$25 million settlement. In 2018, Schneiderman sued him again, for misusing money entrusted to a charity, the Donald J. Trump Foundation. The charity case ended with Trump paying a US$2 million penalty.
But if those inquiries each targeted a single aspect of Trump’s life, the current probes take a wide-ranging look at his financial decisions in the years before he ran for president.
The New York attorney general has focused on two properties for which Trump claimed US$46 million in tax deductions by using ‘‘conservation easements’’ – giving up some of the value of his land by declaring he would not develop it. The federal tax breaks were based on the value Trump gave up. James’s investigators want to know whether that was exaggerated.
In addition, James’s investigators have asked about Trump’s Chicago hotel, probing whether Trump paid the proper taxes when a lender forgave more than US$100 million in debt he owed on the property, according to court filings. And she has asked whether he misled potential lenders for his 40 Wall Street tower and other properties by sending them ‘‘Statements of Financial Condition’’ that exaggerated his assets and underplayed his debts. Now, Vance has a tool no investigator has ever had before: the former president’s tax returns, which also contain voluminous information about his businesses.
Vance obtained them last month after years of litigation. Tax experts say they should allow investigators to see years’ worth of data, on dozens to hundreds of Trump subsidiaries. In addition to the two New York investigations, Trump faces three probes related to his efforts to overturn his loss to President Joe Biden. Two are in Georgia, where Trump, in a phone call, pressured Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to ‘‘find’’ enough votes to let him win.
In Atlanta, Fulton County Democratic District Attorney Fani Willis announced plans in early February to investigate the Trump call and other ‘‘attempts to influence the administration of the 2020 Georgia general election.’’ Willis said her investigation was a criminal one and would examine whether Trump violated state laws against ‘‘solicitation of election fraud,’’ conspiracy, racketeering, or making threats related to the election administration.
In Washington, DC, Democratic Attorney General Karl A. Racine has also opened a criminal investigation into Trump’s actions on January 6, when supporters of the president sacked the Capitol to try to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s win.
A spokesman said Racine was investigating whether Trump violated a district law against ‘‘inciting or provoking violence.’’
Because of the limits of district law, however, Racine could not charge Trump with a felony – only a misdemeanour. And, because of limits on Washington DC’s extradition powers, Trump, if charged, could be arrested only if he entered the city.
Racine also has sued Trump’s company for allegedly misusing money donated to his 2017 inauguration.
The Justice Department,in the meantime, is conducting a broad investigation of the January 6 Capitol attack. The department declined to answer when asked whether it might investigate Trump’s role in the insurrection as well. ‘‘We are not going to comment on any individual(s), but our ongoing investigation of the events of January 6, which has already resulted in criminally charging over 300 individuals, is being guided at every stage by the facts and the law,’’ Justice Department spokesman Marc Raimondi said in a statement.
Among the 29 lawsuits Trump is facing, about 18 result from disputes with his properties: slipand-fall suits, an allegation about bedbugs at Trump International Hotel Las Vegas, a suit alleging that his Chicago hotel sucked out river water without a permit.