Trump family values

Ivanka and Don Trump Jr. were never indicted for lying to buyers as they sought to sell, sell, sell units in the Trump SoHo luxury condo-hotel. But the story of the prosecution that never was is the latest indictment of Trump family business practices, staining too the otherwise solid reputation of Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance.

An investigation by ProPublica, WNYC and The New Yorker reveals that in 2008, the siblings massively inflated the number of the building’s units that had been bought.

Their actions spurred a 2010 civil suit, claiming “a consistent and concerted pattern of outright lies,” which prompted the Manhattan DA’s office to open an investigation.

Defense lawyers copped to misstatements but called them “puffery.” Vance’s prosecutors continued to pursue the matter.

Enter Marc Kasowitz, the pit-bill lawyer for Donald Sr. In January 2012, Kasowitz donated $25,000 to Vance’s reelection campaign. In the spring, he joined the case and requested a meeting with Vance and other top brass.

To Vance’s credit, he returned the money before the May 2012 meeting, consistent with what he calls the standard practice of giving back the cash of donors with cases before his office.

In August, Vance dropped the case without every impaneling a grand jury — a decision he insists was on the merits, unrelated to Kasowitz’s attempts to wield influence.

Before long, Kasowitz asked to host a fundraiser for Vance, and did so a few months later, personally contributing $31,993. He went on to raise more from others, a grand total of more than $50,000.

Vance only now says he plans to give that second Kasowitz donation back. Good, but too late; he never should have accepted campaign money from a donor he had months before barred on conflict grounds.

From a prosecutorial perspective, the decision not to pursue the case against Ivanka and Don Trump Jr. was defensible. By the time Vance made the call, victims had settled their civil suit — with an extraordinary letter indicating they had no interest in cooperating with a criminal case.

But even a Trump lawyer acknowledged that though “dropping the case was reasonable,” “the manner in which it was accomplished is curious.” And far worse than curious was the behavior of the Trump children in intentionally misleading buyers. The word for that is rotten.