Discussing a report in the New York Times that the office of Manhattan District attorney Cyrus Vance has intensified their investigation into Donald Trump’s relationship with Deutsche Bank, CNN’s John Harwood speculated the president might see some jail time.
According to NYT report, “Employees of Deutsche Bank and Aon, two corporate giants, could be important witnesses. As two of Mr. Trump’s oldest allies — and some of the only mainstream companies willing to do regular business with him — they might offer investigators a rich vein of information about the Trump Organization.”
Adding that to the president’s other legal woes that can come into play once he leaves office after January 20th, the CNN White House correspondent admitted that details about what is being discussed are sketchy, but what is known to date indicates investigators have a good idea what they’re looking for due to previous conversations with former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen.
“We don’t know a lot of detail about this, but we’ve gotten outlines of what it may be about from Michael Cohen in his public testimony,” Harwood told host John Berman, “in which he has said before Congress that President Trump had a pattern of lying about the value of his assets, inflating them, in order to either get good publicity or impress lenders, but lying on the downside, deflating them for the purpose of avoiding taxes and this appears to be what Cy Vance is investigating.”
“Cy Vance, remember, a state and local prosecution is beyond the reach of a presidential pardon, so even if the president decides that he is going to pardon himself before leaving office, which is a legally dubious step, never been tried, he could not pardon himself from a state charge,” Harwood added. “This is in addition to the civil investigation that’s underway by the New York Attorney General Letitia James. All of this — again, we do know not if Cy Vance is ultimately going to bring charges — but I think this is one reason why all the talk about Trump potentially running in 2024 has gotten a little ahead of itself.”
“Set aside that he is an overweight 74-year-old man,” he added. “There is also a chance that he could be facing criminal prosecution after he leaves office and it is not beyond the realm of possibility that he could end up in jail.”
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