So: Allen Weisselberg and the Trump Org have been indicted with multiple counts in a 15 year tax avoidance scheme where many company officers received "fringe benefits" that were not reported for tax purposes. This is a good start. It probably should involve more years but there's statutes and whatnot. Anyway, bags of cash in the form of rent, tuition, and other nifty expensive shit kept top bosses happy so they didn't have to pay tax on their full compensation and went about their jobs (and I dunno, I'm not a lawyer, let alone a mob lawyer, but when folks in your employ are paid extra--it's because you expect extra--like keeping shtum about things that might otherwise be very interesting.)
Trump and his kids aren't named in the indictment--but I feel like we will get to that at some point in this investigation. I find it hard to believe randos not named "Trump" got special compensation and people actually named "Trump" working for that company did not. Have you seen these large adult children?
Anyway, the charges here definitely imply lots of IRS tax fraud, and I would like to hope DOJ follows up on that part, because cha-ching.
Anyway, Weisselberg is pleading "not guilty" because he is very loyal and has been comfortable for a long time and is totally stalling and maybe he thinks Trump still has some pull to help a brother out. I don't know about that, and I definitely suspect someone else is already diming out every bit of what Weisselberg could already offer, except for a few pieces. It might not matter whether Weisselberg "flips" (All Trump scandals presume Trump is guilty and the only question is whether associated parties talk--you ever notice that?)
I'm not an optimist, I'm just a person with a very low opinion of these mooks. They got overlooked as being too big to investigate because of all the hassle the lawyers would tie anyone (state, federal, whatever) up in, until the irony of ironies: Trump ran for president and brought all his corruption to the fore.
I guess that makes him a little bit right that he's under the gun because he was president, but not for the reasons he thinks.
So, as for the cascade of financial liability the Trump Org should wind up in: despite their advertised reticence, Deutche Bank isn't going first on calling the loans. That might call too much attention to how dodgy and money-launder-y his loans were in the first place. But there will be pressure on his partners not part of Trump Org, and other lenders (for some of his personal loans). He's gonna be liquidating and still coming up short AF.
Here's the deal--Trump has been trading on his name a long time, and Celebrity Apprentice really helped him not seem like a multiply-failed goober--but attention to just really f'd up business procedures and corruption is going to make his business seem very not so good. You know, the business he was failing at before he failed America. (Mitt Romney tried to warn us.) It's a lot of expense for the government to go after rich folks, so mostly, if you're rich and not very offensive, you probably skate.
But then Trump got very offensive. And now his name stinks and his properties aren't even worth what they used to be. And maybe this has international ramifications, as an international company, where Trump ultimately holds liability.
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