04 May 21
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FOCUS: Bess Levin | Report: Trump's Inner Circle Is Terrified. To Be Fair, They Probably Should Be.
Bess Levin, Vanity Fair
Levin writes: "If you haven't been keeping up with the legal affairs of Donald Trump of late, what you should know is that the guy is very likely f--ked."
To be fair, they probably should be.
f you haven’t been keeping up with the legal affairs of Donald Trump of late, what you should know is that the guy is very likely f--ked. With the ex-president facing no fewer than 29 lawsuits and three criminal investigations, his tax returns are currently in the hands of Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., whose team is also working to flip the Trump Organization employee who knows where all the bodies are buried and has both (1) cooperated with prosecutors in the past and (2) made some rather interesting comments about the company’s legal dealings. At the same time Rudy Giuliani had his home and office raided by the feds last week, a turn of events that former U.S. attorney Preet Bharara has said is very, very bad news for the NYC mayor turned Trump lawyer/cautionary tale. All of which reportedly has the rest of the 45th president’s inner circle extremely concerned about their own legal exposure.
CNN reports that the raids on Giuliani’s Madison Avenue apartment and Park Avenue office have “left allies of the former president feeling uneasy about what could come next,” according to sources close to Trump. “This was a show of force that sent a strong message to a lot of people in Trump’s world that other things may be coming down the pipeline,” one adviser told CNN. According to that person, the seizing of Giuliani’s electronic devices has “ignited a sense of fear” inside Trump’s orbit “that Justice Department officials may be more willing to pursue investigations of the 45th president or his inner circle than many Trump allies had previously believed.” The same person opined to CNN that they couldn’t believe “you would need to send seven FBI agents to go and collect a cell phone and laptop,” calling the raid “overkill.”
Of course Giuliani and the rest of Trump’s allies may still be operating under the false sense of security provided by the last administration’s Justice Department, run by Bill Barr, wherein alleged criminals were shielded from consequences thanks to their proximity to the equally shady president. As The New York Times reported last week, political appointees at the DOJ blocked prosecutors from obtaining the Giuliani warrants last summer and again after the election. (They were only granted once Merrick Garland took over, which, as Bharara noted, was a delay that could have accidentally cost Giuliani a Trump pardon.)
And speaking of Trump’s inner circle, last week his former “fixer,” Michael Cohen, claimed that Giuliani would ultimately turn on Trump to save himself. And not just Trump, but the entire family. “There’s no doubt that [Giuliani is] nervous…. And it’s rightfully so that he’s nervous, because he knows the power of the SDNY is unlimited, and they use that power,” Cohen said. Noting that Giuliani presumably “has no interest in going to prison and spending the golden years of his life behind bars,” Cohen said, “Do I think Rudy will give up Donald in a heartbeat? Absolutely. He certainly doesn’t want to follow my path down into a 36-month sentence.” He added: “What’s ironic here is the fact that these tactics of the Southern District of New York, in terms of bullying you into a plea deal, were created by Rudy Giuliani going back 30 years ago. And it’s just ironic that the tactics that he created for that office are now going to be employed against him, in terms of making him plead guilty and, certainly, at the least, turning over information about Jared, Ivanka, about Don Jr., about Donald himself, about all of these individuals in that garbage can orbit of Donald Trump.” A person close to the 45th president concurred that Giuliani would end up cooperating with prosecutors, telling CNN: “Even the most loyal people have their breaking point,” adding that Giuliani flipping “wouldn’t shock me at all.”
In an email to CNN, the former NYC mayor’s attorney said Giuliani “has done nothing wrong” and that the raids demonstrated a “corrupt double standard” by Joe Biden’s DOJ in its treatment of Trump’s associates versus Democrats, seemingly a reference to the fact that Hunter Biden has not been prosecuted for the fictitious crimes Giuliani has claimed the president’s son committed in Ukraine. Not acknowledged by Giuliani, of course, is the other inconvenient fact that many of Trump’s allies are criminals. So, y’know, there’s that.
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