Tag: manhattan da
Manhattan DA’s ‘Doubts’ On Trump Case Lead Top Prosecutors To Quit

Manhattan DA’s ‘Doubts’ On Trump Case Lead Top Prosecutors To Quit

Two top prosecutors in the office of the Manhattan District Attorney have “abruptly” resigned, throwing the fraud case against Donald Trump into jeopardy.

The New York Times reports the new Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg, “indicated” to the two prosecutors “that he had doubts about moving forward with a case against Mr. Trump. "The prosecutors have not presented the grand jury with any new evidence in the last month.

“Without Mr. Bragg’s commitment to move forward, the prosecutors late last month postponed a plan to question at least one witness before the grand jury,” the Times reveals. “They have not questioned any witnesses in front of the grand jury for more than a month, essentially pausing their investigation into whether Mr. Trump inflated the value of his assets to obtain favorable loan terms from banks.”

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance

Manhattan D.A. Investigating Second Trump Organization Executive

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Major media outlets have been reporting extensively on the role that Allen Weisselberg, chief financial officer at the Trump Organization, plays in Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr.'s criminal investigation of the company. But Vanity Fair's Bess Levin, in her June 21 column, emphasizes that Weisselberg isn't the only one in the Trump Organization who is under scrutiny by Vance's office.

Vance, Levin notes, is also probing Trump Organization COO Matthew Calamari.

"As part of its criminal investigation into Donald Trump, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office has, for many months now, been trying to get Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg — who knows where all the bodies are buried and could likely put the dots together for a jury — to flip," Levin explains. "Thus far, it doesn't appear as if he's done so, but the fact that Weisselberg could reportedly face charges this summer presumably ups the chances he'll cooperate to save himself. In the meantime, though, Cyrus Vance, Jr.'s office is apparently looking into another figure who may have some extremely helpful information to share. The Wall Street Journal reports that New York prosecutors are investigating Matthew Calamari, Trump's bodyguard turned chief operating officer, and the question of whether or not he was the recipient of 'tax-free fringe benefits,' as part of their probe into the company possibly giving out such perks to employees as a way to avoid paying taxes."

Calamari hasn't been charged with anything in connection with Vance's investigation of the Trump Organization. Neither has Weisselberg or former President Donald Trump. But Levin notes that according to Wall Street Journal sources, prosecutors have advised both Calamari and his son, Matthew Calamari Jr., to hire lawyers — which, Levin observes, is "generally not a great sign."

"(The older) Calamari has reportedly lived for years in an apartment at the Trump Park Avenue building on the East Side and driven a Mercedes leased through the Trump Organization," Levin notes. "His son, Matthew Calamari, Jr., also lives in a company-owned building. Junior joined the family business in 2011 right after graduating high school and was named corporate director of security in 2017, according to a LinkedIn profile."

Vance's office recently convened a grand jury, which, according to Washington Postreporters Jonathan O'Connell, Shayna Jacobs, David A. Fahrenthold, and Josh Dawsey, is "expected to decide whether to indict the former president, according to two people familiar with the development, and is pressing Weisselberg to provide evidence implicating Trump."

Report: Manhattan District Attorney Plans To Thwart Manafort Pardon

Report: Manhattan District Attorney Plans To Thwart Manafort Pardon

Hanging over Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation — and every other federal investigation that implicates people in President Donald Trump’s circle — is the chance that he may use his office’s pardon power to allow his allies to escape punishment for their crimes. Many, including prosecutors on Mueller’s team, believe that this possibility could have led his former Campaign Chair Paul Manafort to continue lying to the special counsel even after he entered a cooperation agreement.

But new reports Friday suggest that District Attorney Cy Vance in Manhattan has a plan to undermine any attempt by Trump to pardon Manafort.

According to Bloomberg News and the New York Times, Vance is preparing to bring state charges against Manafort in the event that the president nullifies his prosecution. The president has no authority to pardon state crimes.

Bloomberg reported:

At the state level, Vance is preparing an array of criminal charges. While their full extent isn’t clear, they would include evasion of New York taxes and violations of state laws requiring companies to keep accurate books and records, according to one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the investigation is confidential.

However, this approach would pose some challenges. Legal experts believe it may violate the principle of double jeopardy — the idea that people cannot be charged and tried for the same crimes more than once — if Vance were to simply replicate Mueller’s charges as state crimes.

According to the Times, though, “prosecutors in Mr. Vance’s office have expressed confidence that they would prevail, people with knowledge of the matter said.”

Even if Manafort does expect a pardon from Trump, it’s far from certain he’ll get one. Attempting to pardon him could potentially trigger a backlash in Congress, though how severe it would actually be is debatable, and it could hurt his reelection chances.

If Trump fears these outcomes, he may simply wait until after the 2020 election to issue the pardon, particularly if he loses.

Yet simply the existence of reports that prosecutors are planning to subvert the pardon could sap it of its force. Assuming Trump wants Manafort to think he’ll get a pardon as long as he stays quiet about the Russia investigation or other matters, this news could make the former campaign chair realize that gambling on a pardon is a futile bet. With this in mind, he may finally start cooperating with prosecutors in earnest.

IMAGE: Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr. testifies before the House Judiciary Committee in Washington March 1, 2016. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

Manhattan DA Opens Probe Into Port Authority

Manhattan DA Opens Probe Into Port Authority

By Shawn Boburg, The Record (Hackensack, N.J.)

HACKENSACK, N.J.—The Manhattan district attorney has launched a wide-ranging investigation into the Port Authority, issuing a subpoena for communications between New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s office and agency officials, a source familiar with the matter said Saturday.

The development signaled the opening of a new legal front in the controversy surrounding New Jersey’s beleaguered chief executive.

The subpoena, issued by the office of Cyrus Vance Jr. in March, requests the communications and other documents related to the rebuilding of the World Trade Center, the Port Authority’s takeover of operations at the Atlantic City Airport and the diversion of $1.8 billion in Port Authority money for construction of New Jersey roads, the source said.

Investigators, who have already begun conducting interviews, are looking at potential conflicts of interest among commissioners and whether the Christie administration’s tapping of Port Authority funds to rebuild the Pulaski Skyway and other state-owned roads was legally authorized, a second person familiar with the investigation said.

The subpoena, served on the Port Authority, means a second law-enforcement agency, besides the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey, is looking at controversies that have emerged or attracted scrutiny in the aftermath of the George Washington Bridge lane-closure scandal.

The office of U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Paul Fishman was notified before Manhattan’s district attorney issued the subpoena and was not surprised by it, said a third source familiar with talks between the offices. It’s unclear if the two offices are conducting parallel investigations or are working in tandem.

The Manhattan prosecutors’ focus on the Pulaski Skyway follows a report in The Record last month that found Port Authority lawyers expressed concern in 2011 that diverting $1.8 billion from the agency to state roadway projects in New Jersey was not legal without approval from lawmakers in New York and New Jersey.

Christie administration officials, internal Port Authority documents show, pushed for the money anyway, requiring a creative and complex legal justification that agency attorneys privately called “questionable.” Agency lawyers declared that the roadways, all in Hudson and Essex counties, were access roads to the Port Authority’s Lincoln Tunnel, even though the roads are miles from the tunnel in Weehawken and do not directly connect to it.

Investigators in Manhattan have been looking at the Port Authority’s assertion in official statements to bondholders that the road projects, which involve the Pulaski Skyway, Route 139, Wittpenn Bridge and Portway New Road, were properly authorized, and investigating whether the move violated New York’s state securities or state income-tax laws, one of the sources said. All the roadways are owned by New Jersey.

The northbound lanes of the Pulaski Skyway were closed Saturday and will remain that way for two years during a project to rebuild the 3.5-mile span. The elevated roadway was built in the early 1930s to provide access to the Holland Tunnel and now suffers from serious structural problems.

Vance’s office is also interested in whether the Port Authority’s governor-appointed commissioners — many of whom are titans of private industry in engineering, real estate and law — have taken part in agency decisions that overlap with their private business interests, one source said.

A representative of Fishman’s office in New Jersey referred questions to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, which did not respond to requests for comment through its spokeswoman. Christie spokesman Kevin Roberts declined to comment.

The subpoena appeared to be wide-ranging, leading one person familiar with its contents to call it “a fishing expedition.” All of the people who spoke about the investigation agreed to do so only on the condition they not be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Amid the increasing scrutiny on the Port Authority, at least one commissioner appears to be preparing to step down, one of the sources said.

New Jersey Commissioner Anthony Sartor, who has been dogged by conflict-of-interest controversies because he owns a large engineering company and has led a committee that oversees construction at the World Trade Center, was expected to resign shortly, the person said. Sartor, who has been on the board nearly 15 years, has not been accused of any wrongdoing and has recused himself from nearly all World Trade Center votes in recent years.

New Jersey’s U.S. attorney has also issued a subpoena related to apparent conflicts involving former Port Authority Chairman David Samson, who is a founder of a prominent law firm that represents clients who have done business with the authority.

The investigation by Vance’s office appears to be looking at other commissioners’ potential conflicts and how those are handled internally, as well. The subpoena requests documents related to several specific World Trade Center votes, including approvals related to the $4 billion transportation hub under construction at the site in downtown Manhattan.

“They’re looking at conflicts, conflict policies, how conflicts are tracked and how they’re reported,” one source said of investigators from Vance’s office. The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News reported Vance’s interest on Saturday.

Port Authority commissioners fill out financial-disclosure forms once a year and are responsible for updating them periodically. The agency’s legal department, led by Darrell Buchbinder, who also holds the title of chief ethics officer, uses those lists to notify commissioners when a matter might present a conflict, but the decision of whether to vote is left to individual commissioners.

Samson, who resigned last month, has drawn criticism for voting on matters that benefited clients of his law firm, Wolff & Samson. His firm served as bond counsel for the South Jersey Transportation Agency, which last year handed over operational control of the Atlantic City Airport to the Port Authority. Samson recused himself from that vote, but spoke favorably about the decision afterward in response to questions from reporters, WNYC radio reported.

A Port Authority spokesman declined to comment .

In addition to the new probe and the investigation by Fishman’s office, a panel of state legislators has also been looking into the lane closures and related matters.

A report commissioned by Christie and released late last month cleared the governor of any wrongdoing. It was widely criticized as a “whitewash” by Democrats and others who cited Christie’s ties to members of the team of attorneys that led the investigation.

AFP Photo/Eric Thayer