Dirty Money

The New Yorker, ProPublica, and WNYC jointly broke a story yesterday about how Donald Trump's two children, Don Jr. and Ivanka, were almost charged with felony fraud by the Manhattan District Attorney (link here).

Prosecutors in the DA's office were pushing for an indictment, but then the District Attorney himself overruled their decision. Trump's adult children were never charged for what prosecutors said was their crimimal fraud in misleading prospective buyers of units in the Trump SoHo, a hotel and condo development in New York City.

Coincidentally -- or not -- that same District Attorney received campaign donations from Trump's lawyer totaling tens of thousands of dollars, both before and after the indictment matter was under consideration in his office.

This is not the first time Trump's organization has made large campaign donations to prosecutors who were investigating him and his family for possible criminal activity. When Trump was the subject of a criminal fraud investigation by the Florida Attorney General's office, he made a large campaign donation to that same Attorney General, who later ordered the criminal investigation closed (details here).

It is worth noting that Trump himself used to publicly crow about how if you made large campaign donations, an official would return the favor. In 2013, for instance, Trump bragged, "When you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do” (source here).

Hopefully Robert Mueller, who is overseeing the federal criminal investigation into Trump and his organization, will be looking at some of the President's campaign donations very closely. Just because a state prosecutor declines to indict does not mean a federal prosecutor is barred from doing so.