Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith issued a subpoena today for records from the Trump Organization dating back to 2017, including foreign financial records from seven countries, according to The New York Times.
It remains unclear precisely what the prosecutors were hoping to find by sending the subpoena to Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, or when it was issued. But the subpoena suggests that investigators have cast a wider net than previously understood as they scrutinize whether he broke the law in taking sensitive government materials with him upon leaving the White House and then not fully complying with demands for their return.
The Times also reports that the Trump Organization has real estate licensing and development deals in China, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Oman.
What could be the purpose of the subpoenas of the Trump Organization? That was the question posed to Former Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal, who appeared on MSNBC and said he believes the disgraced former president may have tried to sell the documents to foreign nations.
“Just about ten minutes ago, on air, I said to you that the stolen documents case against Donald Trump is his biggest threat, and that it gets stronger with every passing day,” Katyal noted. “I guess it’s getting stronger with every passing minute because, in the last ten minutes, it appears to have gotten even stronger.”
Katyal added, “Basically, the background here is the prosecutor’s fear, the public’s fear, that Donald Trump monetizes everything. He monetized Jan. 6th, of all things. He monetizes his impeachment and the like. So, I think the prosecutor’s concern here has been when he took these highly sensitive classified documents, was he trying to monetize those as well?”
The new subpoena also suggests there could be even more serious criminal charges coming against the previously indicted ex-president, Katyal explained.
“What this says is perhaps there is even more. There is a whole other set of potential criminal charges.
“Of course, this is just early reporting, but basically, what this reporting is saying is that since 2017, the prosecutors were looking at Trump’s conduct while in office, while president and after he left office. So, they’re not just looking at the Stormy Daniels kind of time period, which is before Trump took office, or the inflation of real estate assets, which was before Trump took office. They’re looking now at presidential and post-presidential conduct.”
If indeed it can be proven that Trump sold such documents to foreign nations, that would mean the ex-president is a traitor and could be locked up for the rest of his life, along with any Trump Org. officials who might have taken part in the scheme.
