>The Trump family is a weird family?? Take a look at the Biden family.
>I would say that the Trump kids have turned out a lot better than those
>in the BIden family.
>
>

Trump's been convicted of how many felonies? That must be excusable for a
little criminal shit like you.

Trump's children are Criminals to the heart.

Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr. Were Close to Being Charged With Felony Fraud

New York prosecutors were preparing a case. Then the D.A. overruled his
staff after a visit from a top donor: Trump attorney Marc Kasowitz.

by Jesse Eisinger and Justin Elliott, ProPublica, and Andrea Bernstein and
Ilya Marritz, WNYC Oct. 4, 2017, 4 a.m. EDT

Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr., arrive at the 58th presidential
inauguration in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, 2017. (Win McNamee/Pool via
Bloomberg/Getty Images)

This article is a collaboration between ProPublica, WNYC and The New Yorker
and is not subject to our Creative Commons license.

In the spring of 2012, Donald Trump�s two eldest children, Ivanka Trump and
Donald Trump Jr., found themselves in a precarious legal position. For two
years, prosecutors in the Manhattan District Attorney�s office had been
building a criminal case against them for misleading prospective buyers of
units in the Trump SoHo, a hotel and condo development that was failing to
sell. Despite the best efforts of the siblings� defense team, the case had
not gone away. An indictment seemed like a real possibility. The evidence
included emails from the Trumps making clear that they were aware they were
using inflated figures about how well the condos were selling to lure
buyers.
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In one email, according to four people who have seen it, the Trumps
discussed how to coordinate false information they had given to prospective
buyers. In another, according to a person who read the emails, they worried
that a reporter might be onto them. In yet another, Donald Jr. spoke
reassuringly to a broker who was concerned about the false statements,
saying that nobody would ever find out, because only people on the email
chain or in the Trump Organization knew about the deception, according to a
person who saw the email.

There was �no doubt� that the Trump children �approved, knew of, agreed to,
and intentionally inflated the numbers to make more sales,� one person who
saw the emails told us. �They knew it was wrong.�

In 2010, when the Major Economic Crimes Bureau of the D.A.�s office opened
an investigation of the siblings, the Trump Organization had hired several
top New York criminal defense lawyers to represent Donald Jr. and Ivanka.
These attorneys had met with prosecutors in the bureau several times. They
conceded that their clients had made exaggerated claims, but argued that
the overstatements didn�t amount to criminal misconduct. Still, the case
dragged on. In a meeting with the defense team, Donald Trump, Sr.,
expressed frustration that the investigation had not been closed. Soon
after, his longtime personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz entered the case.
A view of the Trump SoHo hotel and condominium building. (Drew
Angerer/Getty Images)

Kasowitz, who by then had been the elder Donald Trump�s attorney for a
decade, is primarily a civil litigator with little experience in criminal
matters. But in 2012, Kasowitz donated $25,000 to the reelection campaign
of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., making Kasowitz one of
Vance�s largest donors. Kasowitz decided to bypass the lower level
prosecutors and went directly to Vance to ask that the investigation be
dropped.

On May 16, 2012, Kasowitz visited Vance�s office at One Hogan Place in
downtown Manhattan � a faded edifice made famous by the television show,
�Law & Order.� Dan Alonso, the chief assistant district attorney, and Adam
Kaufmann, the chief of the investigative division, were also at the
meeting, but no one from the Major Economic Crimes Bureau attended.
Kasowitz did not introduce any new arguments or facts during his session.
He simply repeated the arguments that the other defense lawyers had been
making for months.

Ultimately, Vance overruled his own prosecutors. Three months after the
meeting, he told them to drop the case. Kasowitz subsequently boasted to
colleagues about representing the Trump children, according to two people.
He said that the case was �really dangerous,� one person said, and that it
was �amazing I got them off.� (Kasowitz denied making such a statement.)

Vance defended his decision. �I did not at the time believe beyond a
reasonable doubt that a crime had been committed,� he told us. �I had to
make a call and I made the call, and I think I made the right call.�

Just before the 2012 meeting, Vance�s campaign had returned Kasowitz�s
$25,000 contribution, in keeping with what Vance describes as standard
practice when a donor has a case before his office. Kasowitz �had no
influence and his contributions had no influence whatsoever on my decision-
making in the case,� Vance said.

But less than six months after the D.A.�s office dropped the case, Kasowitz
made an even larger donation to Vance�s campaign, and helped raise more
from others � eventually, a total of more than $50,000. After being asked
about these donations as part of the reporting for this article � more than
four years after the fact � Vance said he now plans to give back Kasowitz�s
second contribution, too. �I don�t want the money to be a millstone around
anybody�s neck, including the office�s,� he said.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. (Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

Kasowitz told us his donations to Vance were unrelated to the case. �I
donated to Cy Vance�s campaign because I was and remain extremely impressed
by him as a person of impeccable integrity, as a brilliant lawyer and as a
public servant with creative ideas and tremendous ability,� Kasowitz wrote
in an emailed statement. �I have never made a contribution to anyone�s
campaign, including Cy Vance�s, as a �quid-pro-quo� for anything.�

Last year, The New York Times reported the existence of the criminal
investigation into the Trump SoHo project. But the prosecutor�s focus on
Ivanka and Donald Jr. and the email evidence against them, as well as
Kasowitz�s involvement, and Vance�s decision to overrule his prosecutors,
had not been previously made public. This account is based on interviews
with 20 sources familiar with the investigation, court records, and other
public documents. We were not able to review copies of the emails that were
the focal point of the inquiry. We are relying on the accounts of multiple
individuals who have seen them.

Requests for interviews with Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. were
referred to Alan Garten, the chief legal officer of the Trump Organization.
In an emailed response, Garten did not address a list of questions about
the criminal case. Instead, he quoted the company�s filings in civil
litigation relating to the Trump SoHo, which described complaints as �a
simple case of buyers� remorse.�

But even a lawyer in the Trump camp acknowledges that the way the case was
resolved was unusual. �Dropping the case was reasonable,� said Paul Grand,
a partner at Morvillo Abramowitz who was part of the Trump SoHo defense
team. �The manner in which it was accomplished is curious.�

Grand, who was a partner of Vance�s when the district attorney was in
private practice, said he did not believe that the D.A.�s office had
evidence of criminal misconduct by the Trump children. But the meeting
between Vance and Kasowitz �didn�t have an air you�d like,� he said. �If
you and I were district attorney and you knew that a subject of an
investigation was represented by two or three well-thought-of lawyers in
town, and all of a sudden someone who was a contributor to your campaign
showed up on your doorstep, and the regular lawyers are nowhere to be seen,
you�d think about how you�d want to proceed.�

In June 2006, during the season finale of �The Apprentice,� Donald Trump
Sr. unveiled the Trump SoHo as a visionary project. The luxury development
was intended to mark the ascension of Ivanka and Donald Jr. � then 24 and
28 years old, respectively � as full players in the Trump empire. They
signed the licensing deal alongside their father, and photographs of Ivanka
were featured in the Trump SoHo�s advertising, under the tagline �Possess
your own SoHo.�

Their partners on the project included two Soviet-born businessmen, Felix
Sater and Tevfik Arif, who ran the Bayrock Group, a real estate development
firm. Sater had a history of running afoul of the law. In 1993, he was
convicted of assault and spent about a year in prison for attacking a man
with the stem of a margarita glass in a bar fight. In 1998, he pleaded
guilty to one count of racketeering for his role in a $40 million
securities fraud scheme.

The Trump SoHo was beleaguered from the start: Named for one of Manhattan�s
trendiest neighborhoods, the development wasn�t really in SoHo, but located
just west of it, near the entrance ramp to the Holland Tunnel. Zoning laws
wouldn�t allow a residential tower at the location, so the Trumps fell back
on an alternative: a �condo-hotel,� in which buyers got a hotel room rather
than an apartment, and were legally prohibited from staying there more than
120 nights per year. Worse, the high-priced condos hit the market in
September 2007, just as the global economy began to crater in what became
the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Business was slow, but the Trump family claimed the opposite. In April
2008, they said that 31 percent of the condos in the building had been
purchased. Donald Jr. boasted to The Real Deal magazine that 55 percent of
the units had been bought. In June 2008, Donald Jr. and Ivanka, alongside
their brother Eric, gathered the foreign press at Trump Tower in Manhattan,
where Ivanka announced that 60 percent had been snapped up. �We�re in a
very fortunate position,� she said, �where we have enough sales and now we
are strategically targeting certain buyers.�
Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. stand before the new Trump
SoHo Hotel Condominium rendering during a news conference in New York on
Sept. 19, 2007. (Jennifer Altman/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

None of that was true. According to a sworn affidavit by a Trump partner
filed with the New York attorney general�s office, by March of 2010, almost
two years after the press conference, only 15.8 percent of units had been
sold.

This was more than a marketing problem. The deal hinged on selling at least
15 percent of the units. By law, the sales couldn�t close with anything
less. The Trumps and their partners would have had to return the buyers�
down payments.

Some buyers concluded that they�d been cheated. In August 2010, some sued
the Trump Organization and others involved in the project in New York
federal court. �This action seeks to redress the substantial and ongoing
pattern of fraudulent misrepresentations and deceptive sales practices� by
the Trumps and the other defendants, the suit charged. The plaintiffs
argued that there�s a vast difference in value between a unit in a building
that is 15 percent sold and one that is 60 percent sold. Their complaint
accused the sellers, including the Trumps, of �a consistent and concerted
pattern of outright lies.�

After the civil suit was filed, the Manhattan district attorney�s office
opened a criminal investigation. Prosecutors are often wary of getting
involved in a dispute between wealthy litigants. But in this instance,
according to a person familiar with their thinking, the lawyers in the
Major Economic Crimes Bureau quickly concluded that there was enough to
warrant an investigation. They believed that Ivanka and Donald Jr., might
have violated the Martin Act, a New York statute that bans any false
statement in conjunction with the sale of a security or real estate.
Prosecutors also saw potential fraud and larceny charges, applying a legal
theory that, by overstating the number of units sold, the Trump were
falsely inflating their value and, in effect, cheating unsuspecting condo
buyers.

Peirce Moser, an assistant district attorney known for his methodical,
comprehensive investigations, soon took over the case. �He is not a
cowboy,� Marc Scholl, who spent almost 40 years as a prosecutor in the
district attorney�s office, said. �He is certainly not out to make
headlines for himself or to advance himself.�

On the other side, the Trumps� defense team included Gary Naftalis and
David Frankel, of the law firm Kramer Levin; Paul Grand represented one of
the real estate brokers who had worked with the Trumps.
Marc Kasowitz addresses the media on June 8, 2017, in Washington, D.C.
(Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

As the investigation progressed, Vance suffered an embarrassing setback in
one of his highest profile cases. In the summer of 2011, his office had
abandoned a sexual assault case against the former managing director of the
International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Vance, who was
pummeled in the press afterward, denied in his interview with us that the
case made him reluctant to take on another prominent defendant.

A few months later, on Jan. 11, 2012, Marc Kasowitz contributed $25,000 to
Vance�s campaign, unbeknownst to prosecutors in the Major Economic Crimes
Bureau, who continued their work. Moser was particularly focused on email
correspondence, according to seven people familiar with the case.

The prosecutors began considering impaneling a special grand jury,
according to a person familiar with the investigation. That would have
represented a significant escalation in the case, because it is often a
prelude to indictments. With a grand jury in place, defense lawyers knew
the risk of indictment was high.

The defense team offered a deal to stave off this possibility, floating the
possibility of a settlement of some kind, including a deferred prosecution
agreement, which would have meant the corporate equivalent of probation for
the Trump Organization. With the investigation appearing to gather
momentum, Naftalis and Grand, who had already met with the prosecutors
twice, began to step up their campaign against the case. Grand calls this
the �internal appellate process.� Particularly when well-heeled or high-
profile defendants are involved, there can be a multi-month advocacy
process that slowly makes its way up the hierarchy inside the Manhattan
D.A.�s office.

Grand and Naftalis decided that it would be unwise to go over the heads of
the staff prosecutors. Instead, on April 18, 2012, they sent a letter to
Adam Kaufmann, then chief of the investigative division (he�s now in
private practice), outlining their arguments.
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The next day, the defense lawyers met with Moser, Kaufmann, and others from
the prosecution team. The defense team acknowledged that the Trumps made
some exaggerated statements in order to sell the units. But this was mere
�puffery�� harmless exaggeration. Such language, they contended, didn�t
amount to criminal conduct. The Trumps weren�t selling useless swampland in
Florida. The condos existed. And the buyers� money was in escrow the entire
time.

The defense lawyers argued that bringing such a case to trial would be
wasteful and that resources would be better spent on more serious offenses.
As Grand put it to us during our recent interview, �I guess in a world that
is completely pure and where there is no deviation between propriety and
the law, that kind of exaggeration and deliberately concentrated
exaggeration can be pursued. But is that the kind of criminal law
enforcement the D.A. should be doing?�

Moser�s answer seemed to be �yes,� and he found support among his
supervisors. Moser had prepared an elaborate PowerPoint presentation,
featuring dozens of emails that prosecutors believed showed that Ivanka and
Donald Jr. had repeatedly lied to buyers. �You couldn�t have had a better
email trail,� a person familiar with the investigation told us.

At the meeting, Kaufmann peppered the defense team with questions, at one
point raising his voice, according to a person who was there. �I believed
in the case,� Kaufmann told us, though he declined to discuss the evidence.
�But believing in the case doesn�t mean we had reached the point when [I
had] settled on what should happen with the case.�

White-collar criminal cases are often challenging to bring because of their
complexity. And, by the time of the April meeting, prosecutors knew that
they faced another impediment, this one created by legal maneuvers in the
Trumps� civil case. Five months earlier, the Trumps and their partners had
reached a settlement with the disgruntled buyers. The defendants agreed to
return 90 percent of the buyers� deposits, plus their attorneys� fees. But
they extracted a rare concession in return: The plaintiffs agreed not to
cooperate with prosecutors unless they were subpoenaed. (Garten, the Trump
Organization�s chief legal officer, noted that the settlement terms were
confidential and declined to comment on them.)

Adam Leitman Bailey, the attorney for the buyers, had been helping
prosecutors. Now he provided aid to the Trumps, writing a letter to the
district attorney that stated: �We acknowledge that the Defendants have not
violated the criminal laws of the State of New York or the United States.�
In our interview with Vance, he said he had never before seen a letter
where plaintiffs in a civil case asserted that no crime had been committed.
�I don�t think I�d ever received a letter like it,� Vance said. He calls it
a �significant and important� communication.

Certainly, prosecutors could subpoena the buyers of Trump condos. But they
feared the witnesses would undercut the criminal case by claiming they
weren�t victims of a fraud.

Still, Moser, backed by his supervisors, persisted. �Peirce believed in his
case,� Grand said. �We did not succeed in talking him out of it and didn�t
succeed in talking one or two levels above him into dropping the case.�

Finally, in the spring of 2012, Kasowitz joined the case. His involvement
�came from out of the blue,� Grand told us. He and the other lawyers
assumed Kasowitz intervened at the request of Donald Trump Sr.

In early May 2012, Kasowitz asked to see the District Attorney. Vance told
us such meetings aren�t unusual � but his investigations chief at the time,
Kaufmann, characterized Kasowitz�s request as �a little premature.� The
Trump lawyer was going over the heads of everyone who had been working on
the case. The gathering, on May 16, lasted 20 to 30 minutes, according to
Vance. Kasowitz repeated the arguments the defense team had made before.

Afterward, Kasowitz didn�t seem to think his clients were in the clear. On
Aug. 1, he suggested a settlement, proposing that the Trump Organization
would not admit to wrongdoing but would agree not to mislead people in the
future and would submit to outside monitoring. The offer proved
unnecessary. Two days later, on Aug. 3, 2012, Moser called the Trumps�
defense attorneys and told them prosecutors were dropping the
investigation. (Moser, who still works for Vance, now as senior
investigative counsel, did not respond to requests for an interview made
over multiple months. Shortly before this article was published, he sent an
email stating that Vance�s ultimate decision in the case �was not
unreasonable� and that throughout the process, the D.A. asked �smart
questions� and expressed �reasonable skepticism.�)
Employees stand outside the Trump SoHo in February 2017. (Drew
Angerer/Getty Images)

In his interview, Vance defended his decision to drop the case with no
conditions, even after Kasowitz offered a deal. �This started as a civil
case,� Vance said. �It was settled as a civil case with a statement by the
purchasers of luxury properties that they weren�t victims. And at the end
of the day, I felt if we were not going to charge criminally, we should
leave it as a civil case in the posture in which it came to us.�

In September 2012, within weeks of the case being resolved, Kasowitz
contacted Vance�s campaign about hosting a fundraiser, according to a
spokesperson for the campaign. Kasowitz held the event that January. He
personally donated almost $32,000 to Vance�s campaign, and 20 of his law
firm�s partners and employees kicked in at least another $9,000. Then, in
October 2013, as Election Day approached, he hosted a breakfast �
�Republicans for Cy Vance� � which raised an additional $9,000.

Vance defended his decision to accept the money Kasowitz sent his way. �We
did the right thing,� he said, referring to the decision to drop the case.
�Another five and a half months go by. Marc Kasowitz has no matter pending
before the office for the Trumps or anybody else. It�s 2013 and it�s an
election � and I welcome his support.� Vance noted that New York law
allowed him to accept such a contribution. Still, he now intends to return
the money to Kasowitz.

Ivanka Trump is now an adviser to the president, with an office in the West
Wing. Donald Jr. is running much of the family empire while his father is
in the White House. Kasowitz attained national prominence when he was
retained to represent the president in the Russia investigation, only to be
supplanted as lead counsel. Vance is running unopposed for reelection in
November. The Trump SoHo went into foreclosure in 2014 and was taken over
by a creditor. Only 128 of the 391 units in the building have sold. That
comes out to around 33 percent.

Derek Kravitz and Leora Smith of ProPublica contributed reporting to this
article, as did Keenan Chen, Alex Mierjeski, Inti Pacheco and Manuela
Andreoni of Columbia Journalism Investigations.

Update, Oct. 16, 2017: District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. announced Oct. 15
that he has ordered an independent review of how his office handles
campaign contributions and that he will not accept any further donations
until the review is completed.

The move follows our story about the Trump SoHo investigation as well as
renewed scrutiny of Vance�s decision not to charge movie executive Harvey
Weinstein for allegedly groping an Italian model in 2015.

�I�m prepared to dramatically restrict who can donate money to our campaign
� including lawyers � and the amounts that our contributors are able to
give,� Vance wrote in an op-ed in the New York Daily News.

The 90-day review will be conducted by Center for the Advancement of Public
Integrity at Columbia Law School. The recommendations of the center will be
made public, Manhattan DA spokeswoman Joan Vollero told ProPublica.