Circling back to our previous coverage, the New York attorney general’s office in June accused the Trump Foundation of being little more than a slush fund, which, among other things, made illegal in-kind contributions for Trump’s campaign.
The scope of the legal issues raised by the New York court filing is quite broad. There are, for example, questions surrounding the president and his family allegedly running a fraudulent charitable en y. There are additional questions about violations of federal election law, which appear to have been quite flagrant.
There’s also the fact that the president personally signed federal tax returns – under penalty of perjury – swearing that his foundation wasn’t used for political and/or business purposes, and we now know there’s quite a bit of evidence that suggests it was used for both.
Jenny Johnson Ware, a criminal tax attorney in Chicago, told the New York Times in June: “People have gone to prison for stuff like this, and if I were representing someone with facts like this, assuming the facts described in this pe ion are true, I would be very worried about an indictment.”
As Rachel has noted on the show, the New York Times also reported that the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance “has opened an investigation into whether the Donald J. Trump Foundation violated state tax laws, a move that could lead to a criminal referral for possible prosecution.”