MANHATTAN (CN) — New York investigations into the business dealings of former President Donald Trump have been underway for years, but recent news suggests cases against the Trump Organization, and perhaps Trump and his children, are getting close to charges being filed.
State Attorney General Letitia James is leading a civil investigation into the organization, and is also working with the Manhattan District Attorney’s office looking into criminal charges. Both efforts examine whether the organization and its namesake inflated property values to get better loan terms, or minimized them for tax benefits.
While the parallel investigations could result in different outcomes for Trump’s business and the former president himself — cataclysmic financial penalties in the civil suit, and the chance of prison time in the criminal probe — they may also intertwine to advance the mounting case against him, experts explain.
Grand jury proceedings are secret, but insiders have said they included the questioning of an accountant for Trump as well as one of his longtime bankers, according to a report in The New York Times. Accountants who gave lenders annual statements of the organization’s financial status said they prepared the documents using information from the organization itself, raising the question of whether Trump misled his own accounting team.
To legal experts, the interviews suggest that prosecutors are trying to get someone high up in the organization to cooperate.
“Somebody at some point, I think, has got to flip on him,” said law professor Kevin C. McMunigal — and when that happens, “the dominoes will start to fall.”
The strategy is familiar to McMunigal, a criminal law professor at Case Western Reserve University and a former federal prosecutor.
In his investigations as a U.S. attorney, “it was all built on rolling people and moving up the chain, getting people to cooperate,” McMunigal said.
The first criminal indictment from the Trump investigation was unsealed in July, naming both the Trump Organization and one of its top executives, Allen Weisselberg. He pleaded not guilty to hiding $1.7 million of indirect compensation to evade thousands of dollars in federal, state and local taxes. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. gained access to tax records days after the Supreme Court refused to block a subpoena.
Last week, James announced that she is seeking to depose Trump as part of the civil investigation. That’s likely to center on meetings and submissions to banks and tax authorities that the AG’s office has already uncovered: “They’re going to be marching Trump through all that stuff,” said attorney Tristan Snell, who helped to lead the investigation and civil prosecution of Trump University in 2013.
Snell said that involving Trump suggests James’ office has “90 to 99%” of what they need to file a lawsuit. Unlike a criminal complaint, which can be sparse on details that will later unfold during trial, James will come with receipts — in the form of “bankers’ boxes worth of exhibits.”
“When the AG actuall does drop the bomb, there will be a ton of evidence to comb through on day one,” Snell said.





