Trump and his family still face a ton of criminal investigations
The Mueller report is only the beginning.
The conclusion of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation is far from the end of Trump’s legal worries.
While Trump’s attorney general is declining to prosecute Trump or pursue evidence that he committed crimes, that’s not the case for other law enforcement officials in Trump’s Department of Justice. Federal prosecutors from New York to Los Angeles are still conducting about a dozen investigations into Trump, his family, his businesses, and his activities.
Some of the highest-profile investigations come from the Southern District of New York (SDNY), stemming from the prosecution of Trump’s longtime lawyer and “fixer,” Michael Cohen. The SDNY already indicated that Trump committed multiple felonies during the 2016 election when he ordered Cohen to illegally pay hush money to multiple alleged mistresses in order to buy their silence.
Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison for his part in these and other crimes.
“The important thing to remember is that almost everything Donald Trump did was in the Southern District of New York,” John Martin Jr., a retired federal judge who served as an SDNY attorney during the Carter and Reagan administrations, told the New York Times. “He ran his business in the Southern District. He ran his campaign from the Southern District.”
According to the Times, the SDNY is also looking into the role the Trump Organization and its executives played in the hush money scheme, as well as possible irregularities with insurance claims.
SDNY investigators, as well as federal prosecutors in Los Angeles, are also looking into irregularities in donations to Trump’s inaugural committee, including the possibility that Trump’s team illegally accepted donations from foreign nationals.
In Virginia, federal prosecutors are gearing up for the trial of Trump’s longtime adviser, Roger Stone, who was charged by Mueller’s team for a variety of crimes.
Along with federal prosecutors, state agencies are also looking into Trump and his gang of shady associates. The state of New York recently charged Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, with a variety of state crimes related to mortgage fraud. Manafort was recently sentenced to more than seven years in prison for a number of crimes.
New York state is also looking into the Trump Foundation for a litany of allegations, including civil inquiries into whether the company violated tax laws.
All in all, the Times concludes that there are about a dozen investigations that the public knows about — and the exact number is unknown, due to the secrecy surrounding ongoing investigations.
Mueller’s investigation didn’t lead to an indictment of Trump, but it also did not exonerate Trump on the question of whether he obstructed justice.
That damning fact might only be the tip of the iceberg. Trump’s alleged criminal enterprise is so sprawling that investigators at numerous offices across the country are needed to get to the bottom of it.
Trump’s own Department of Justice has already implicated Trump in some felonies — and there’s no telling what else the many other ongoing investigations could reveal.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
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