Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast
It’s long been a mystery why no New York prosecutor has dared to go after Donald Trump with racketeering charges—the strongest and most obvious type of criminal case for his storied history of deceit in the corporate world.
The New York attorney general’s office has, of course, accused Trump of inflating property values in a civil case. And the Manhattan district attorney charged Trump with 34 felonies related to falsifying business records in service to his Stormy Daniels hush money payments. But those cases would pale in comparison to the potential legal jeopardy Trump would face if a prosecutor went after the former president for running—in effect—a criminal enterprise.
The DA seems to have passed on that idea. But new reporting from The Daily Beast reveals that the AG’s office, which was positioned to do it on its own, looked at bringing criminal charges against Trump—and may have been stymied by state offices under the administration of former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.