Republicans must realize that, for Trump, this is the beginning of the trouble, not the end.
Republicans must realize that, for Trump, this is the beginning of the trouble, not the end.
I n the greater scheme of things, a New York State jury’s criminal conviction of the Trump Organization is small potatoes. Mainly, though, that is because there is such a daunting array of other legal problems on former president Donald Trump’s horizon, near and short term.
The immediate pain of Tuesday’s 17 convictions in Manhattan will be trivial. At most, the business is looking at about $1.6 million in fines. The convictions are corporate, not personal. They will result in no criminal record for any member of the Trump family. No human will be going to jail except Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer who previously pled guilty — and the fact that he’s looking at only about three months of incarceration is a measure of how minor the charges are.
That said, these are minor felonies. It will be accurate for the media and Donald Trump’s political foes to describe the organization he has run for decades as “felonious” — get used to seeing a lot of that word, as its multiple mentions in today’s New York Times coverage suggests. In the coming years, as New York State attorney general Letitia James proceeds with the massive civil-fraud lawsuit she has brought against the Trump Organization — a suit in which Trump, his adult children, and Weisselberg are named as defendants, and in which a state judge has ordered that the business be placed under a monitor — the media and Democrats will remind the public constantly that Trump’s company has already been criminally convicted of fraudulent tax practices.
In terms of doing business, moreover, the tax convictions are consequential. The Trump Organization holds prodigious assets, and it still does some real-estate work in addition to brand licensing. It has lots of debt that needs to be rolled over periodically. It needs insurance — under circumstances where the state AG is accusing the business of defrauding insurers. It has surely attracted more scrutiny from state and federal tax authorities, and probably from tax authorities overseas (where the organization does a significant amount of business). The guilty verdicts are only going to make it more difficult for the Trump organization to obtain the financial assistance, coverage, and legal help it needs to do business.
There will be many who sympathize with the former president, and not without reason. He and his organization have been singled out by hyper-political state prosecutors. As we’ve observed a number of times, state district-attorney and attorney-general positions are elected, not appointed as they are in the federal system. In blue cities and states, it is winning progressive politics to investigate and prosecute the Democrats’ arch nemesis if there is a fig leaf of a reason to do so.
It would be absurd to suggest that the kind of nickel-and-dime tax violations that were at issue in the Trump Organization case are not widespread. But they are often ignored, and only very rarely grist for criminal prosecution. Moreover, progressive prosecutors like Alvin Bragg — the Manhattan DA whose office brought the tax case against Trump and has recently revived a separate investigation of Trump’s pre-2016 election hush-money payment to a porn star — are notorious for their resistance to prosecuting serious street crime. With homicides and other violent offenses surging, it is reasonable to wonder how it is that Bragg has time and resources to hound Trump on comparatively minor misconduct — in this instance, misconduct that could not even be pinned on Trump personally.
It is close to a cakewalk for prosecutors to bring an indictment against a company once one of its senior executives admits committing corporate fraud, as Weisselberg did. Not much personal participation on behalf of other company officials is needed; it’s basically enough if they knew it was going on and failed to stop it, even if they don’t benefit from it. The fact is: Most of the time, prosecutors do not charge the business entity, even though they could do so, because such prosecutions tend to harm innocent people — especially employees and creditors of the business, who may find themselves out of jobs or financially damaged if the prosecution destroys the business. Most of the time, prosecutors content themselves with pursuing the individual executives who committed crime, while sparing the business the stigma and fallout of a criminal conviction.
But this is Trump, and Democrats have made clear that when it comes to Trump, the usual rules do not apply. That Trump brings much of this on himself, and that he has foolishly given his determined enemies plenty of ammunition, does not make this dynamic any more savory.
Finally, I continue to believe that it must dawn on Republicans, as Trump seeks the party’s 2024 presidential nomination, that this is the beginning of the trouble, not the end. We saw again just this weekend: The former president first explicitly and unambiguously called for “termination” of the Constitution, and shortly afterward, when the blowback was appropriately and predictably fierce, he then adamantly denied that he had said what he said. That is not a good look for a guy who is facing a plethora of investigations that hinge on allegations of fraud.
More to the point, though, the news going forward is going to be terrible — grand juries, allegations, more drip-drip-drip disclosure of damning evidence, and quite likely more indictments. The Justice Department has now appointed a special counsel, and the history of such investigations is that they invariably generate more crimes — accusations of obstruction and false statements — and that they keep at it until they come up with something to charge against the main target.
That is what is ahead in the coming months as Trump moves ahead with a campaign that has gotten off to a terrible start. The blunt fact is: He is deeply unpopular nationally and cannot win a national election. The question is: When do Republicans realize this? When do they decide that, no matter how much admiration they may have for Donald Trump, and no matter how unfairly they believe he has been treated, it is time to move on — to a younger set of promising candidates who are qualified to serve two terms and thus would not have lame-duck status the moment they got inaugurated?