Former president Donald Trump will soon be indicted for criminal racketeering under New York state law, according to Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist David Cay Johnston.
Johnston indicated Saturday afternoon that the charges will stem from Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance’s ongoing investigation into whether Trump’s company misled lenders or tax authorities about the value of its properties.
“I anticipate they’re going to bring a racketeering charge against Trump,” Johnston said. “Certainly Trump’s team, when he’s indicted, and I’m certain he will be indicted, is going to try to lay the blame on everybody else, and so what the prosecutors want to show that is if (Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer) Allen Weisselberg phonied up documents, it was at the direction of Donald Trump.”
MSNBC host Yasmin Vossoughian then pressed Johnston to confirm that he is certain about an impending indictment.
“Oh, yeah,” Johnston responded. “They would not have done all of this and know how much they know … if they weren’t going to to do this. Yeah, they will indict him. Exactly when? I don’t know. I don’t expect it will be on a straight tax charge. I think there will be a tax charge, but the key charge will be racketeering.”
He added that the timing of the indictment will depend on how long it takes prosecutors to go through five million pages of documents that were handed over by the Trump Organization.
“Once he’s indicted, Trump will have to surrender himself to be booked. I’m sure he will be released on his own recognizance, and then we will see a campaign of trying to delay trial,” Johnston said. “You will see Donald say, ‘This is corrupt, the prosecutors are corrupt, the police are corrupt, the auditors are corrupt,’ because that’s what Roy Cohn taught him when he was a young man — accuse law enforcement, and then delay, delay, delay.”
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