HIS PROBE-LEMS
Mueller done, but Don faces more scrutiny
President Trump has been on a victory lap since special counsel Robert Mueller wrapped up his investigation with a whimper earlier this month — but the commander-in-chief may not be completely out of the woods yet.
Although Mueller’s full report has yet to see the light of day, Attorney General William Barr stated matterof-factly in a March 24 letter that the special counsel’s investigation cleared Trump of any criminal wrongdoing.
Mueller’s anti-climatic conclusion shifts focus to New York, where at least seven civil and criminal investigations into Trump’s business dealings and personal affairs remain ongoing.
Trump faces several more investigations and lawsuits in states such as New Jersey and Maryland as well as intense oversight efforts in Congress, but the president’s deep ties to his native New York has made him a particularly hot target for Empire State prosecutors.
Several of the investigations targeting Trump carry potential criminal repercussions, but none appear to be as threatening as a couple of inquiries being conducted out of the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York.
Michael Cohen, Trump’s ex-personal attorney, pleaded guilty in a case last year that directly implicated the president in illegal pre-2016 election hush money payments.
Cohen confessed Trump ordered him to issue the payments to two women who had threatened to go public with allegations they had sex with the president over a decade ago.
Cohen has copped to campaign finance crimes stemming from those payoffs and will start serving a three-year prison sentence in May on those and other charges.
Pertinently, the statute of limitations for the campaign finance crime runs out in 2021, meaning Trump could be charged if he loses the 2020 election.
The Manhattan feds are separately looking into Trump’s inaugural committee and whether it was used as a pay-to-play scheme for deep-pocketed political donors, according to reports.
The committee raised $107 million — more than any other committee in history. Prosecutors are reportedly probing whether foreigners illegally funneled money through the committee via straw donors in order to gain access to the incoming administration and whether Trump enriched himself by plugging proceeds into his own business empire.
Following her November election, New York Attorney General Letitia James pledged to shine “a light” on Trump’s business dealings and probe him for possible crimes — and she has made good on that promise.
James picked up where her predecessor, Barbara Underwood, left off and continued to investigate Trump’s namesake foundation over possible self-dealing. The foundation was forced to dissolve, but James wants the Trump family to cough up millions of dollars in fines and be barred from serving on charity boards for a decade.
The attorney general’s office in New Jersey is looking into similar allegations at Trump’s Garden State golf club.
The New York Times published an extensive report in October alleging Trump and his father for years engaged in complex “tax schemes” that at times amounted to “outright fraud.”
Within days of that report, the New York State Department of Taxation confirmed it was looking into the allegations.