Even though former President Donald Trump has been in the news recently regarding eight years of his tax returns being made available to the office of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr., a former prosecutor said Saturday that the Donald’s three eldest children — Don Jr., Ivanka, and Eric — may be the ones who wind up taking the biggest legal hit when it comes to their father’s alleged crimes.
Former assistant Manhattan District Attorney Daniel Alonso was a guest on CNN. He was asked for his thoughts on the case being built by Vance. Alonso began by laying out the full range of crimes the former president may potentially be indicted for:
“He faces peril in multiple jurisdictions, but the Stormy Daniels payment is a discrete set of facts. And if they can get over one weird hurdle in New York on the falsification of business records, that could have legs. Michael Cohen was reimbursed by the Trump Organization and presumably the Trump Organization did not correctly list the information in their records. And there is that recording of Cohen and Trump talking about one of the payments. So I think that that could be a discrete case of falsification of business records, assuming that they can prove the felony count which the statute of limitations hasn’t yet expired.”
And then there’s the numerous alleged financial crimes which could also be lurking in the Trump tax filings, Alonso continued:
“The other stuff, it is certainly very much worth investigating. There are discrepancies between what they are telling the insurance companies and banks and tax authority, very substantial … I think a lot of that remains to be seen. There are — there is a lot of evidence, a lot of people to talk to, and there have been accountants and lawyers presumably who were all involved in this.”
Alonso then explained how it may wind up being the Trump spawn who have to pay the biggest price for their father’s wrongdoing:
“One last thing I want to say, it is not necessarily Donald Trump, right? He may not be the defendant. They may not have enough on these accounting issues to charge him, they may have enough to charge the Trump Organization or other executives, including the kids or others at the organization. Or the CFO. So there are lots and lots of unknowns here, and I wouldn’t assume that the defendant is definitely going to be Donald Trump.”
The possibility of the Trump children being in legal jeopardy raises what may be the biggest questions of all: Are Don Jr., Ivanka, and Eric willing to do decades in prison for daddy? Or would they turn state’s evidence to save their own skin?
Here’s Daniel Alonso on CNN:
