Ivanka and Don Jr. Were Close to Being Charged With Felony Fraud

[pdq]

...reads the headline at ProPublica.

New York prosecutors were preparing a case. Then the D.A. overruled his staff after a visit from a top donor: Trump attorney Marc Kasowitz.

For two years, prosecutors in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office had been building a criminal case...for misleading prospective buyers of units in the Trump SoHo, a hotel and condo development that was failing to sell. The evidence included emails from the Trumps making clear that they were aware they were using inflated figures about how well the condos were selling to lure buyers.

In one email, according to four people who have seen it, the Trumps discussed how to coordinate false information they had given to prospective buyers. In...another, Donald Jr. spoke reassuringly to a broker who was concerned about the false statements, saying that nobody would ever find out, because only people on the email chain or in the Trump Organization knew about the deception...

Then the DA's office suddenly decided to drop the case over the objections of prosecutors under them. This involved a visit by Trump Sr.'s lawyer and $50,000 in campaign donations.

It's nice to have friends in high places (with pockets full of cash...)

[pdq]

Come to think of it, why is this administration filled with family members? Isn't there a law against that?

Well, there was (and still is) but...

The Justice Department has released a series of recently overruled legal memos concluding that presidents cannot appoint their relatives to the White House staff or presidential commissions, even to unpaid posts.

In January, a career Justice Department official essentially declared the earlier opinions erroneous or obsolete, clearing the way for President Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to take a senior adviser position in the White House. First daughter Ivanka Trump later took a similar official but unpaid slot under the same legal rationale.

Before someone raises Bobby Kennedy, let us note for the record that the anti-nepotism statute passed in 1967 was in response to that situation. And in fact it blocked family members from minor roles in the Carter, Reagan, and Obama administration.

But the rules inexplicably changed for Trump to put his kids at the highest levers of the executive branch, citing a law passed before Reagan or Obama:

"We believe that the President's special hiring authority [in the 1978 law] permits him to make appointments to the White House Office that the anti-nepotism statute might otherwise forbid," Koffsky wrote in the opinion sent to White House counsel Don McGahn at his request.

Several ethics experts were critical of the January opinion.

Gee, ya think?

BTW, Trump Sr says this is all...well, you know:

Trump tweet wrote:
Wow, so many Fake News stories today. No matter what I do or say, they will not write or speak truth. The Fake News Media is out of control!

[Speedy]

Having more Trump crime family members working in the alt.White House makes it easier to keep an eye on them and to also build a RICO case against them.

[Lemon Drop]

Do the Trumps do anything without involving shady Russians?

Their partners on the project included two Soviet-born businessmen, Felix Sater and Tevfik Arif, who ran the Bayrock Group, a real estate development firm. Sater had a history of running afoul of the law. In 1993, he was convicted of assault and spent about a year in prison for attacking a man with the stem of a margarita glass in a bar fight. In 1998, he pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering for his role in a $40 million securities fraud scheme.

anyway - we're not shocked to learn at this point that the Trumps use deceptive practices. I guess my question about this failed attempt at prosecution is this: are other real estate developers who do this indicted? The article doesn't really give a sense of that. And it appears that the Trumps refunded their buyers' money and made a deal that those people accepted - rendering prosecution difficult if not impossible.

It's kind of pathetic the way that 45 trained his children to be liars, all in the name of getting richer or to avoid making Daddy mad.

I'm sure they're all telling the truth about everything now though.