This Week: Threatening Us With a Good Time (w/ Updates)

Last Friday, this news dropped (via Tom Winter, Adam Reiss and Dareh Gregorian at NBC News):

The Trump Organization is expected to be hit with criminal charges as soon as next week by Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance’s office in a case that Trump attorneys say is tied to tax-related conduct, multiple people familiar with the matter tell NBC News...

Now it's not like they will arrest a corporate entity (although having it shamble aboot like Frankenstein's Monster would be an apt metaphor), but targeting specific individuals in that organization who had a say in the activities leading up to alleged criminal misdeeds.

This also means that despite our nation's fondest hopes, they're not arresting trump himself (although it would be a nice birthday present on the 4th of July). At this stage of Vance's investigations and grand jury deliberations, we're likely talking about the lower rungs of trump's empire. That the DA's office is tipping their hand that it's all tax-related, we're likely looking at the biggest target being the Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg being prepped for the perp walk.

NBC News first reported this year in an interview with Jennifer Weisselberg, Allen Weisselberg’s former daughter-in-law, that the Manhattan DA was probing schemes where Trump employees including the Weisselbergs were able to avoid paying taxes in exchange for benefits such as an apartment...

NBC News confirmed this week that investigators had also been probing Matthew Calamari, the former Trump bodyguard who's now the company's chief operating officer. The Wall Street Journal, which first reported on the focus on Calamari, cited people close to the matter who said Calamari was being investigated over whether he received tax-free fringe benefits from the company.

Vance has been investigating a variety of allegations of financial improprieties against Trump's company. Court documents show that Vance is probing "possibly extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization," which could include falsifying business records, insurance fraud and tax fraud.

The investigation appears to have picked up steam in recent months, after Vance's office won a lengthy battle to get ahold of Trump's personal and corporate tax returns and underlying financial documents in February...

This is more serious and damaging to trump than the Mueller Investigation. Vance and the New York Attorney General's office are digging directly into trump's own financials, and going at one of the few people who's had direct dealings with trump on tax-related matters. Allen Weisselberg is someone Michael Cohen - who was also deep into trump's financial mischief - repeatedly name-dropped during the early unraveling of everything when it got out trump paid off women who had affairs with him to avoid scandal during the 2016 campaigns.

What is happening here is the prosecutors are trying to get Weisselberg to flip on trump: They likely have all the paper trail they need from trump's tax returns to show he was cooking the books on his property values, but they need direct testimony from someone who was there to confirm who made the final calls on the lawbreaking. So far, Weisselberg hasn't flipped: Without any incentive at the moment, he has no reason to.

Putting him in handcuffs and a jail cell tends to be a big incentive to testify. And even then, Weisselberg has to know he's not the real target of all this. All he's waiting for is a sweetheart deal when it gets to be clear he has to play that particular trump (pun intended) card.

This is all fun and games until someone real high in this organization gets fingered. Maybe not trump himself but definitely one or more of his own kids he's been using as underlings in most of his shadier con jobs. Then it REALLY becomes fun and games.

We'll see this week if this merits a popcorn GIF or a goddamned street party GIF. 

Update Wed. 6/30: CNN is breaking that arrests are expected this Thursday July 1, Weisselberg in particular, involving "tax crimes." Mostly to do with perks and bonuses that apparently were not reported as income. Considering that higher-ups in the trump Organization would have had to sign off on at least some of those actions, we should expect at least one family member if not trump himself getting charged later on.