Luck seems to have run out for former US President Donald Trump as well for certain members of his family, including daughter Ivanka Trump with a new criminal investigation on Trump Organization.
Bess Levin, writing for Vanity Fair says that Donald Trump has always escaped investigations against his organization for being what the law defines as a "scumbag piece of shit."
Trump Organization managed to somehow till now avoid repercussions of cheating hundreds of its contractors, shadily raising the rent of tenants or inciting a mob on the Capitol, but now the luck has run out of favour, reported Vanity Fair.
New York Attorney General Letitia James' office on Tuesday (local time) said that it was working alongside the Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr in an ongoing criminal fraud investigation placing former US President Donald Trump and his family under more pressure.
"We have informed the Trump Organization that our investigation into the company is no longer purely civil in nature," Fabien Levy, a spokesperson for the New York Attorney General's office, said in a statement on Tuesday.
"We are now actively investigating the Trump Organization in a criminal capacity, along with the Manhattan DA We have no additional comment at this time."
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr, whose office obtained eight years of Trump's tax returns earlier this year, a development Trump responded to like a man who knows he's committed all manner of fraud and is about to get caught, reported Vanity Fair.
The long-running criminal investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney has focused on an array of potential financial crimes at the Trump Organization, including tax and bank-related fraud.
In particular, the prosecutors are examining whether Trump's company inflated the value of his properties to obtain favourable loans and lowered the values to reduce taxes.
According to the Washington Post, New York Attorney General's office informed the Trump Organization's attorneys of the shift in April, and suggested that "criminality could apply to actions by current and former company executives and employees if the investigation finds wrongdoing."
Eric and Donald Trump Jr are of course long time executives of the family business, so obviously they could find themselves in very serious trouble. But it may be Ivanka Trump who has the most to worry about, informed Levin.
Last November, shortly after her father lost the 2020 election, The New York Times reported that both James's and Vance Jr's offices had expanded their probes of the then president and his businesses to include suspicious tax write-offs on millions of dollars in consulting fees, some of which, according to a Times investigation, appeared to have been paid to Ivanka.
That investigation--which revealed Trump paid little to no income tax in the last two decades--showed that the "very rich" real estate developer had managed to reduce his taxable income by deducting approximately USD 26 million in fees to "consultants" as business expenses between 2010 and 2018. While the consultants' identities were not listed on tax records, some of the fees definitely looked like they'd been paid to his favourite child, reported Vanity Fair.
Responding to the news on Twitter at the time, Trump's eldest daughter fumed: "This is harassment pure and simple. This 'inquiry' by NYC democrats is 100 per cent motivated by politics, publicity and rage. They know very well that there's nothing here and that there was no tax benefit whatsoever. These politicians are simply ruthless.... This fishing expedition is very clearly part of a continued political vendetta."
Ivanka does not appear to have personally commented on the news of the new criminal probe, though presumably, she's not thrilled.
In a 909-word statement posted to Trump's blog ("From the Desk of Donald J. Trump"), the former president offered his characteristically unhinged thoughts on the matter, claiming, without a hint of irony, that James ran for office pledging to take out her "enemies" (something Trump would never do!); that the criminal investigation into him is "is something that happens in failed third world countries"; and that "the District Attorney and Attorney General are possessed, at an unprecedented level, with destroying the political fortunes of President Donald J Trump and the almost 75 million people who voted for him, by far the highest number ever received by a sitting President."
Meanwhile, Donald Trump on Monday vowed to overcome the criminal probe being launched into his business empire by the New York State Attorney General.
"[T]hey failed to stop me in Washington, so they turned it over to New York to do their dirty work," Trump said in a statement issued on Telegram. "This is what I have been going through for years. It's a very sad and dangerous tale for our country, but it is what it is, and we will overcome together."
Trump is also facing a criminal investigation in Georgia, where the District Attorney in Fulton County is looking into his attempts to reverse the outcome of the presidential election in the state.
( With inputs from ANI )
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