PEOPLE VS. DONALD TRUMP

A former federal prosecutor recounts the failed effort to bring charges against Donald Trump.

“Over the months that I and others worked on the case, we developed evidence convincing us that Donald Trump had committed serious crimes,” writes Pomerantz, who was brought out of retirement to help Manhattan’s district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr., investigate financial misdeeds. The author delivers a deep—and sometimes ponderously detailed—account of what that involved. One point was Trump’s habit of valuing his properties high for the purposes of bank loans and low for the purposes of paying taxes: Whereas one at 40 Wall St. was valued at more than $527 million for a lender, Trump valued it at between $16 million and $19 million for taxes. To Pomerantz’s chief associates, that “looked like fraud” and led the DA’s office to the verge of filing criminal charges. They did not, in part because gaming numbers is a common ploy in New York real estate circles. On the matter of Michael Cohen’s payout, on Trump’s behalf, of hush money to Stormy Daniels “so that she would not disclose her alleged affair with Trump on the eve of the 2016 election,” the legal reasoning gets complicated. The payout becomes illegal only if it’s established that this disclosure is an act of extortion, while the demonstrated falsification of business records is only a misdemeanor in New York. In the end, the DA went after lesser players, including Cohen and Trump Organization finance director Allen Weisselberg, both of whom received prison sentences for their crimes. When Vance left office, his successor, to Pomerantz’s great consternation, dropped the investigation because, the author suggests, he “had scant experience in leading or defending high-profile prosecutions.” Pomerantz’s dour conclusion for the moment is that “once again, Donald Trump had managed to dance between the raindrops of accountability.” Yet, he adds, there are other legal avenues to take, so stay tuned.

A convincingly damning case that dives deep into the tangles of both law and finance.