NY AG seriously considered racketeering charges against Trump: report

03 November 2023

Thanks to New York State Attorney General Letitia James, former President Donald Trump and the Trump Organization are on trial in a civil fraud case. James alleges that Trump's company seriously exaggerated the value of its real estate assets — an allegation that Justice Arthur Engoron, assigned to the case, has agreed with.

The bench trial will determine what type of sanctions the Trump Organization will face. While Trump won't go to prison because of James' lawsuit — this isn't a criminal case — legal experts have said that his business could be devastated.

But James, according to the Daily Beast's Jose Pagliery, seriously considered a criminal case against Trump — specifically, a racketeering case. That is the type of prosecution Trump and a long list of co-defendants are facing in Fulton County, Georgia thanks to District Attorney Fani Willis.

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"It's long been a mystery why no New York prosecutor has dared to go after Donald Trump with racketeering charges — the strongest and most obvious type of criminal case for his storied history of deceit in the corporate world," Pagliery reports in an article published on November 3. "The New York Attorney General's Office has, of course, accused Trump of inflating property values in a civil case. And the Manhattan district attorney charged Trump with 34 felonies related to falsifying business records in service to his Stormy Daniels hush money payments. But those cases would pale in comparison to the potential legal jeopardy Trump would face if a prosecutor went after the former president for running — in effect — a criminal enterprise."

Pagliery continues, "The DA seems to have passed on that idea. But new reporting from The Daily Beast reveals that the AG's office, which was positioned to do it on its own, looked at bringing criminal charges against Trump — and may have been stymied by state offices under the administration of former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. This previously undisclosed bureaucratic showdown is now being surfaced in response to the recent leak of internal AG documents that have been sent to the DA's office last week."

One of the internal documents that "circulated" in James' office in 2020, according to Pagliery, "outlined exactly how to go for the jugular by indicting Trump for essentially running a mob, according to e-mails reviewed by The Daily Beast."

A Daily Beast source, interviewed on condition of anonymity, told the publication, "It was certainly discussed. This was not something that was deliberately ignored."

Pagliery reports that James' office "ultimately rejected the notion of going solo with an indictment" but "loaned two of its lawyers to the Manhattan DA's office, which already had an ongoing criminal investigation."

Read The Daily Beast's full report at this link (subscription required).

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