Figuring out how to pack up and move out of the White House will be a piece of cake – compared to how Trump will have to decide where to get the money he will need to fight the enormous number of lawsuits facing him after January 20, 2021.
There are multiple investigations in the works, looking at possible fraud in his financial business dealings as a private citizen, both as an individual, and through his company. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, an enforcer of New York’s tax laws, has been investigating Trump and his corporation for over two years.
Vance’s probe originally focused on “hush money” payments that Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, and “fixer” paid in 2016 to two women who said they had sexual encounters with Trump, which the president has denied.
More recently, Vance suggested in court filings that his probe is now broader and could focus on bank, tax, and insurance fraud, as well as falsification of business records. Of course, all this centers around Vance’s attempts to obtain eight years of Trump’s tax records.
In the latest court dealings over Trump’s tax records, the U.S. Supreme Court shot down a request from Trump’s lawyers in July – denying Trump’s bid to keep the returns under wraps, saying the president was not immune from state criminal probes while in office but could raise other defenses to Vance’s subpoena, reports Reuters.
How serious are the investigations? The investigations will examine whether the President and his company engaged in bank fraud, insurance fraud, criminal tax fraud, and falsification of business records. These allegations, if proven, could lead to a hefty fine and even imprisonment.
The defamation lawsuits awaiting citizen Trump are numerous, also – including a lawsuit filed by E. Jean Carroll, the former magazine columnist who has accused him of rape. And this alleged rape is just one of many allegations the public has been made aware of over the past four years.
Trump also faces a lawsuit by Summer Zervos, a 2005 contestant on Trump’s reality television show “The Apprentice,” who says Trump kissed her against her will at a 2007 meeting and later groped her at a hotel.
The last four years of the Trump presidency has been marred by constant turmoil, lies, “tell-all memoirs from ex-staffers, prominent resignations, and firings, and crisis after crisis of his own making,” according to Politico.
And that is the whole point I am trying to make. As the old saying goes: “Where there is smoke, there is fire.” But I can also see why Trump is in no hurry to leave the protection his presidency has afforded him so he could use our system of justice to his own advantage.
