The New Yorker published an opinion piece by Evan Osnos optimistically extrapolating how western world unity on closing off access by Russian oligarchs including Vladmir Putin to worldwide financial systems might trigger similar efforts to stop abuses in the legal and financial systems allowing the American uber-wealthy to distort politics via dark money.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/turning-the-focus-on-americas-oligarchsOsnos recounts how numerous investigations in numerous countries found Russian dollars funding Brexit efforts, funding the rise of far-right candidates in France and Germany and in general funding anything sowing conflict between domestic factions on any issue. He then described Biden's pitch for the Disclose Act mentioned in the 2022 State of the Union address and its assumption that if more transparency will help disinfect international funding of divisive politics, we need the same for domestic spending on politics through dark money channels.
Osnos seems to assume that opaque banking is the primary contributor to the wholesale looting of the common good by those at the top and now that we are tackling it internationally, tackling it domestically will be easier as well. His piece ends with a reference back to the 2016 debates in which Trump bragged about avoiding taxes and faced no revolt from voters for his Leona Helmsley ("only little people pay taxes") arrogance. Osnos suggests that maybe after the events in Ukraine and watching the world rally to halt access to banks by oligarchs, the same scrutiny will become fashionable domestically and US politics will become less toxic as "American oligarchs" are brought to heel.
Ummmmmm, in a word... NO.
First, Osnos is not properly framing the concerns over Trump's business dealings. No one can find fault with someone AVOIDING taxes. Tax payers are entitled to whatever deductions, write-downs, exemptions, et al present in the tax code providing the underlying records and accounting for those benefits are sound. The issue with Trump's dealings are that they reflect a consistent pattern of maintaining two sets of books, one set shown to banks deciding whether to lend more money to Trump the individual and The Trump Organization and another set to state and federal tax officials.
The real problem with Trump's dealings and many of our "rich people / bad behavior" concerns is that very little of the corruption is opaque -- it's out in the open -- and much of the corruption is subjected to a different standard of behavior and criminality if it ever reaches law enforcement. The New York Times just published an update to the story behind the resignation of the key prosecutors for the Manhattan District Attorney's office investigating Trump for simultaneous banking fraud and tax fraud that provides a reminder of the double standard applied to the wealthy.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/manhattan-das-investigation-donald-trump-152547072.htmlThe Manhattan District Attorney's office was investigating Trump for a consistent pattern of reflecting the SAME ASSETS in two different sets of paperwork for bank loans and state taxes at GROSSLY DIFFERENT VALUES, always in ways which financially favored Donald Trump. These were not rounding error deltas between the numbers. They reflected probably 30-50 percent swings in valuation on multi-million dollar assets which increased Trump's borrowing capability and likely lowered interest rates by appearing to offer more as collateral for loans banks might not have otherwise made while also drastically reducing his tax bills.
The NYT article states that efforts to continue presentation of material to a grand jury essentially halted upon the swearing in of the newly elected District Attorney Alvin Bragg on January 1, 2022. By late January, a meeting to review the state of the case with Bragg and the two lead prosecutors focused not on the evidence gleaned to date but whether they could win in court.
But Bragg and his senior aides, masked and gathered around a conference table on the eighth floor of the district attorney’s office in lower Manhattan, had serious doubts. They hammered Pomerantz and Dunne about whether they could show that Trump had intended to break the law by inflating the value of his assets in the annual statements, a necessary element to prove the case.
The facts are:
- Trump signed financial summaries stating "Donald J. Trump is responsible for the preparation and fair representation of the financial statement in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America"
- Trump submitted loan paperwork referencing those financial summaries that valued various properties at A dollars
- Trump submitted tax paperwork at the same time of the loan paperwork valuing the same properties at B dollars and the A amounts were vastly larger than the B amounts
- inflated values on loan paperwork benefited Trump by providing the illusion of more collateral
- reduced values on tax paperwork benefited Trump by generating smaller state / county tax bills
- Trump's own accountants have publicly disavowed their work over the past ten years, presumably because they concluded they were consistently provided misleading data
This investigation involved state criminal charges and the burden of proof for a GRAND jury to indict is LOWER than the burden of proof of a TRIAL jury to CONVICT a defendant. The burden of proof at the grand jury phase is reasonable cause. The burden of proof for CONVICTION is beyond a reasonable doubt. So what is the burden for the prosecutor? The American Bar Association says
A prosecutor should seek or file criminal charges only if the prosecutor reasonably believes that the charges are supported by probable cause, that admissible evidence will be sufficient to support conviction beyond a reasonable doubt, and that the decision to charge is in the interests of justice.
Filing charges beyond these circumstances is considered prosecutorial misconduct.
The problem with this rule in recent prominent cases is that middle clause -- that admissible evidence will be sufficient to support conviction beyond a reasonable doubt.. In a case involving a popular figure (Donald Trump, Bill Cosby, etc.), deciding whether evidence is sufficient for CONVICTION requires the prosecutor to forecast the mindset of the judge and jury sitting for the trial and the state's ability to convince that jury of the facts.
Should a prosecuting attorney in a racist county AVOID filing charges in a case of a racially motivated murder even if the evidence is sound and conviction is in the interest of justice if they don't think they can find an unbiased jury or a judge that won't discard valid testimony?
Should a prosecuting attorney looking at a tax fraud and banking fraud case involving tens of millions of dollars in variation that might be worth millions in lost tax revenue AVOID filing charges if there might be one lone juror and fan of the defendant who might lead to a hung jury and acquittal or an expensive re-trial?
The requirement that prosecutors "believe" the admissible evidence is "sufficient" to convict is likely one of the most poorly understood and damaging "features" of the American justice system. There seem to be cases all over the country of county District Attorneys falsely pursing charges against known-innocent defendants simply because law enforcement could manufacture "evidence" that looked sound and local officials wanted to appear tough on crime. How is this ethical rule stopping those abuses? The American justice system seems to have no objection to going after the weak / poor when there's a political point to be made. The rule only seems to be helping those at the top when those within the justice system don't want to alienate powerful people.
This standard and its consequences need serious review. It seems to put the onus on a prosecutor -- and only the prosecutor -- to essentially pre-judge an entire potential trial and calculate the impact of every personality of every judge, attorney, juror and witness who might become involved and surmise whether all those variables are "likely" to return a conviction. That should not be entrusted to one person -- that's why we have grand juries. Unless this aspect of our justice system is corrected, our American oligarchs will likely continue to feel untouchable.
WTH
