MSNBC contributor Donny Deutsch, a longtime friend of Michael Cohen, said today that he expects federal prosecutors to take down the entire Trump Organization. And in doing so, he said, they will also be in a position to take away all the president’s money and other assets.
The “Morning Joe” regular said the recent subpoena of Donald Trump’s inauguration committee places the family business in legal jeopardy, and Vanity Fair reporter Emily Jane Fox agreed with him.
Fox, who is based in New York and has been investigating Donald Trump’s businesses for years, said:
“It raises alarm bells. Here’s why I think this is so damaging, why all the investigations in the Southern District of New York [SDNY] could be so damaging to the president for years to come. This investigation, in particular, it involves the Trump family, it involves the Trump Organization profiting off of his new position and it involves the early stages of his administration.”
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“This is something that ties into all of the soft spots the president cares about, and I don’t think it’s going away any time soon.”
Deutsch added that the SDNY investigation was beginning to look like a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) case. RICO is the law which in the past has been used to take down mob organizations and crime families.
“I’m going to throw out the term RICO,” Deutsch said. “That law was introduced to make it possible to convict mob bosses. It allowed law enforcement to say ‘Okay, if somebody in your organization killed somebody we can pin it on you.’”
Deutsch also explained that all the investigations into Trump and his family’s business and political activities could be tied together under one RICO investigation to make it easier to indict and convict the president and his children.
“This broad investigation would bring in everything from the Trump Foundation to Trump University,” Deutsch said, then he added:
“You can bring back cases that have even been settled civilly, to money laundering, and you will see, I believe, and what you can also do with RICO, is you can seize assets.”
Deutsch predicted that federal prosecutors would destroy everything the president and his family had built through corruption, and also take his money and other assets.
He ended by saying:
“I think from here on in to the day Donald Trump dies, until those children are wherever they go, they will be picking apart this organization, because what they want to make an example of is this president who showed up and tried to undo 250 years of what our grandfathers fought for, and this organization will eventually be RICO’d and take the entire thing down. This is just the beginning.”
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I am a lifelong Democrat with a passion for social justice and progressive issues. I have degrees in writing, economics and law from the University of Iowa.
