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Cyrus Vance

Former District Attorney Warns Trump Against 'Criminal' Threats To Bragg

Former Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance offered some free advice to indicted ex-President Donald Trump on Sunday's edition of Meet the Press. Vance, whose successor Alvin Bragg filed thirty-four charges against Trump last week, urged Trump to tread carefully because his continued bombast against Bragg and the American legal system could further sour his image to a jury and potentially add accusations of additional criminal behavior.

"If you were the prosecutor, which one of those three hurdles would you see to be the highest?" NBC News moderator Chuck Todd asked Vance in reference to the enormous task that Bragg has undertaken by choosing to prosecute Trump for, most notably, orchestrating a hush money payoff to adult film entrepreneur Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election.

"Well, I think this is obviously a case of great consequence and a case that's never happened before. So, it's novel in and of itself. I think there's, I think the – if I'm guessing about the president's strategy and it's only a guess, and he will have excellent lawyers – is that they will take a run at the law first perhaps on the question of whether or not the misdemeanors can be elevated," Vance said.

"That's probably more a question of law than a question of fact and will take a run there first. It would not surprise me if the attorneys representing the former president tried to move into federal court on some ancillary action as they did with us, and to have that action somehow be reviewed, try to be reviewed on the federal side and, and, and have some impact, therefore, on whether the state court could go forward," Vance continued. "For example, asking for a stay because there's gonna be an election in a year-and-a-half, and this case there, the state case shouldn't go forward. So those are, those are avenues that I think that, that you, you'll see."

Vance also explained that Trump's erstwhile personal lawyer Michael Cohen – who went to prison for the Daniels scheme as well as lying to Congress – may be a tough witness to Bragg to present to jurors.

"Of course, Cohen will be tacked heavily, but the, the flip side of that, of course, is Cohen worked for Mr. Trump. And, you know, and, and they obviously had a working relationship. So we often find in criminal cases that the, the witnesses who are involved aren't necessarily, uh, you know, the, they're, they're not priests or nuns. They, they are who they are in whatever organization they have," he noted.

"Final question is this. What's the likelihood..." Todd began.

"I would add something else, Chuck," Vance interjected.

"No, go ahead," Todd replied.

"Well, I, I've gotta say that I, I was disturbed to hear the former president speak in the way he spoke about attor – about the district attorney Bragg and even the trial court in the past week. And I think if I were his lawyer and believe me know when it's called up to ask for my advice, uh, I would be mindful of committing some other criminal offense, like obstruction of governmental administration, which is interfering with or, you know, by, by threat or otherwise the operation of government," Vance cautioned. "And I think that could take what perhaps we think is not the strongest case when you add account like that, put it in front of a jury, it can change the jury's mind about the severity of the case that they're looking at."

Watch below or at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Prosector Who Quit Manhattan District Attorney Says Trump Is ‘Guilty Of Numerous Felonies’

Prosector Who Quit Manhattan District Attorney Says Trump Is ‘Guilty Of Numerous Felonies’

One of the two senior prosecutors in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office who quit last month said he believes Donald Trump is “guilty of numerous felony violations,” and it was a “grave failure of justice” for the newly-elected DA to not prosecute the case.

Last month Mark Pomerantz submitted his letter of resignation, seemingly in protest over the decision by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to not prosecute the former president. His longtime predecessor, DA Cyrus Vance, had convened a grand jury prior to his retirement.

“Mr. Pomerantz, 70, a prominent former federal prosecutor and white-collar defense lawyer who came out of retirement to work on the Trump investigation, resigned on the same day as Carey R. Dunne, another senior prosecutor leading the inquiry,” the New York Times reported. “Mr. Bragg’s decision was ‘contrary to the public interest,’ he wrote.”

“The team that has been investigating Mr. Trump harbors no doubt about whether he committed crimes — he did,” Pomerantz added. “I am convinced that a failure to prosecute will pose much greater risks in terms of public confidence in the fair administration of justice.”

According to the Times:

Mr. Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., had decided in his final days in office to move toward an indictment, leaving Mr. Trump just weeks away from likely criminal charges. Mr. Bragg’s decision seems, for now at least, to have removed one of the greatest legal threats Mr. Trump has ever faced.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Former President Trump

Indictment: Trump Thinks He Can Choose Which Laws To Heed

Reprinted with permission from DC Report

The extraordinary indictment of the Trump Organization last Thursday prompted an extraordinarily awful response from its sole owner and its lawyer.

Trump asserted that he can pick and choose which laws he obeys. His lawyer, Alan Futerfass, says that prosecutors should have settled the Trump Organization tax fraud allegations in secret negotiations, not with criminal charges filed in public.

What's brazen is how Trump and Futerfass reveal support for two systems of justice, separate and unequal, with people like themselves getting special light treatment.

Pay close attention to the last words in this Trump Organization statement: "The district attorney is bringing a criminal prosecution involving employee benefits that neither the IRS nor any other district attorney would ever think of bringing."

The statement is a lie. Tax fraud cases involving unreported compensation get prosecuted.

Still, the Trump Organization statement may serve a useful purpose by awakening the public to how little prosecution there is against what the IRS says is rampant and growing tax evasion at the top of the economic ladder. Such inattention may cost the rest of us more than a trillion dollars a year.

The Trumpian assertion that prosecutors should not bring charges against thieves who steal from our governments reveals the entitled view among too many of the wealthiest and most privileged Americans. Many of the rich think money makes them special, so special that the criminal law shouldn't apply to them.

The 15-count indictments returned by a Manhattan grand jury are only the first in what l likely will be a series of charges. Ultimately, I anticipate that a grand jury will return a state-level racketeering enterprise indictment. That would allow a receiver to take control of the Trump Organization, ending its decades of cheating workers, vendors, governments and investors.

The richly detailed bill of particulars hints at other likely prosecutions.

Prosecutors charged Trump bagman Allen Weisselberg, chief operating office for the organization, only after he repeatedly rejected invitations to flip on Trump and turn state's evidence. Weisselberg, the indictment says, destroyed some evidence and maintained two sets of books to hide transactions from tax collectors.

This indictment is a tool to leverage Weisselberg, to get him to realize the awful fate that awaits him if he clings to Trump.

After 48 years of doing the Trump family's dirty work, Weisselberg has become a wholly owned psychological subsidiary of Trump's criminal mind. Breaking free would be difficult for Weisselberg, who is about to turn 74, but the prospect of dying in prison may clarify his thoughts about his moral and legal duty. Weisselberg could get 15 years, but he also might get probation.

Trump Textbook

Trump has long argued that he himself is above the law.

When Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance was trying to get his accounting, business and tax records, Trump went to the Supreme Court twice. In 2019, Trump lawyer George Consovoy told a federal judge that if Trump actually shot someone on Fifth Avenue, the NYPD could not even investigate the murder.

Years earlier Trump endorsed a textbook for his scam Trump University. This is from Trump University Asset Protection 101: Tax and Legal Strategies of the Rich: "When you own your own business, you determine how much income tax you pay."

That's not true, but it sure tells you how Trump thinks.

Contrast Trump's cavalier attitude about breaking the law with how American law enforcement and the courts treat those born into poverty who commit petty nonviolent crimes.

Willie Simmons is serving life in an Alabama prison for stealing $9 in 1982. Alvin Kennard got the same life sentence for stealing $36 in 1984, though a judge freed him last year.

50 Years For A Pizza Thief

Jerry Dewayne Williams—broke, hungry and turned away when he begged for food—grabbed a slice of pizza from four children in Redondo Beach, California. Williams got 25 years to life, though a judge let him go after five years.

And then there's Leandro Andrade, another penniless man, who stole four videos in one store and five in another. The U.S. Supreme Court held that his consecutive 25-year sentences were "not unreasonable."

Yet the Trump Organization asserts that enabling its chief finance officer to steal $880,000 from the federal, state and New York City governments shouldn't be prosecuted.

Nine bucks, nine videos, one slice of pizza for a hungry man result in life sentences or damn close, but prosecutors should look the other way or allow tax fraudsters to negotiate in secret, pay some money and go on their way? That's Trumpian chutzpah.

Victor Hugo's 19th century novel Les Misérables about Jean Valjean, who stole bread for his starving sister and spent the next 19 years in prison, is not exactly fiction in modern-day America.

One law for peasants and another for the privileged is not in our Declaration of Independence or our Constitution. Still, it dwells in the hearts of a majority of our Supreme Court justices, as well as Donald Trump and his well-heeled white-collar criminal defense lawyers.

Expect More Indictments

You can be sure that the finely detailed case filed Thursday is far from a comprehensive indictment of Trump Organization tax cheating.

Barbara Res, who for many years oversaw Trump construction projects, told Ari Melber on MSNBC just hours after the arraignments about dubious $1,000 a week expense accounts.

"The first time I started working for Trump, one of the first things I encountered was, I was checking expenses of one of our top employees, and they were ridiculous," Res said.

Res said she spoke to Trump about the inexplicable expense money only to discover he was behind it. "Trump told me to just come up with just so much, I forget the amount, a thousand dollars a week or whatever it was in expenses, maybe not that much back then, and they'll be paid. And they'll be off the books."

What Res described is tax fraud, plain and simple. And if we applied to Trump the same standards applied to Simmons, Kennard, Williams and Andrade, then Trump would have started wearing an orange jumpsuit decades ago. But we don't have equal justice for all.

Notice that Trump's statement through the Trump Organization and lawyer Futterfas' statements aren't denials of tax fraud, just assertions that to prosecute for these crimes isn't fair.

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."