Will Trump Be Indicted?

There are new clues...

This newsletter edition explores the pending criminal probe into the Trump Organization. (You can subscribe now with this button.)

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Will Donald Trump Be Indicted?

We are about half a year into President Biden’s first term, and new revelations about Trump-era scandals still continue to make news.  Heading into this past weekend, The New York Times broke the story about the Trump Justice Department’s surveillance of Trump’s Congressional opponents (among others). That sparked calls for even more investigations, while Trump already faces open criminal probes in Georgia and New York.

When it comes to firm consequences, many return to a fundamental question:

Will Donald Trump ever be indicted or go to jail? 

That question follows Trump because evidence suggests he has done things that have landed other people in jail, like paying virtually no taxes for years, or surrounding himself with convicted criminals.

Out of all the scandals and investigations, closed or open, whether Trump ultimately is indicted—or not—turns more on one person than any other.

It depends on New York D.A. Cy Vance.

He is running the criminal probe of the Trump Organization, where a special grand jury was convened last month.

We have some clues about this investigation, and Trump’s future:

• D.A. Vance is likely to make his decision by the end of this year, when his term ends.

• D.A. Vance appears to think he has evidence of some crimes in this probe—hence the grand jury—though we can’t say who this evidence implicates.

• He already won a key step in getting Trump’s tax returns.

• D.A. Vance has taken on high profile cases like this before—and the results are mixed.

I’m not going to walk through those cases in detail here, but there is a theme that has emerged throughout his career: Vance is willing to probe powerful and famous defendants. 

He even investigated the Trump Organization once before. He is not always aggressive, however, in ultimately bringing charges.

That has led to a few notable “do overs,” like Vance failing to prosecute a possible 2015 case against Harvey Weinstein, and then coming back to throw the book at him, and winning. Vance’s office was also lenient in proceedings regarding then-sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and like many prosecutors, Vance gave most big banks a pass on indictments stemming from the 2008 financial crash.

The current case probing the Trump Organization could be one of Vance’s “do overs.” He led a probe of the Trump Organization in 2012 for allegedly defrauding tenants at Trump SoHo. Vance ultimately dropped the investigation, even though many thought there was a strong case—one D.A. candidate told me this week that Vance gave in to pressure. Vance says at the time, the Trump Org customers refused to cooperate with him, so he turned to cases with victims who “actually wanted us to take the case.”

But we’re not in 2012 anymore.

Vance already deployed his power to succeed legally where others failed. He won the long battle to seize Donald Trump’s elusive secret tax returns.

If they reveal crimes, is this grand jury ready to act? 

We don’t know. 

But given the timeline, there are basically three doors here for how this probe ends:

1. This can still end like the D.A.’s last Trump Org case: After much attention and drama, the D.A. can close it without any charges.

2. Like Vance’s other “do-overs,” he could go farther and try to indict the entire Trump Organization—a big deal—or top executives. 

3. D.A. Vance could indict the organization’s founder himself, Donald Trump.

These outcomes range from a status quo, to enormous financial pressure on Trump, (pressing and potentially bankrupting him by toppling the company that has kept him afloat all these years), to the possibility of something unprecedented in history: 

An ex-president reporting into central booking for a mug shot, and then the trial of the century.

If there are any indictments—of the executives, the company or Trump—it would be up to the D.A. who replaces Vance to prosecute those cases.  

As I write you about all this, voting is underway now in New York for candidates to replace him (we’ve had a few on “The Beat”). 

It’s remarkable to think how in our legal system, this momentous, history-making case could ultimately be handled by one of these (currently obscure) candidates. We don’t know what happens next, but we will probably have even stronger clues by the end of the year, when Vance’s term ends.

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Reminders

This is my newsletter for sharing writing, providing a place we can interact, and a few other things. I send out newsletters about twice a week—a journalistic piece on Tuesdays, and then something cultural on Fridays. Everyone can get the journalistic pieces, while subscribing for the full newsletter gets you access to everything across the board.

(A recent culture piece recounts some of what The Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir told me about Jerry Garcia visiting him, and how I fell in love with concerts. You can subscribe to read it.)

Sincerely, Ari