MSNBC legal analyst Cynthia Alksne, former federal prosecutor, spoke out on Monday to warn that Manhattan prosecutors who indicted the Trump Organization and CFO Allen Weisselberg will likely next go after former President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump.
“This is an opening salvo,” Alksne said, according to Raw Story [1]. “Ordinarily or quite often, New York State indictments are not as detailed as this. The prosecutors went to an amazing amount of effort to show Weisselberg, ‘We have everything we need.’ They’re really not only pressuring him to flip, but the amount of detail in this indictment tells me they’re trying to tell other people you have got to flip because we have everything.”
“We have the double books,” she added. “We know what you told your tax accountant was a lie. We know that we’re going to be able to prove these cases. So I think it’s a stair-stepping, like anything, in forms of indictment, so first, it’s Weisselberg, and there are a lot of other people mentioned, individual number one, or person x signed, or person y signed. Those people who were mentioned in the indictment, I would expect they’re next, and then it builds and builds.”
Alksne went on to say that prosecutors should go after Trump’s children.
“I would focus it on the kids,” she said. “I would focus it — apparently, they’ve had some testimony by the controller in the State of New York. That means they’ve essentially given him immunity. I would focus on the kids.”
“My guess is Calamari is kind of easy picking, and there are similar ways to give money for the kids,” Alksne continued. “We’ve heard a lot of this reporting about Ivanka Trump getting consulting fees, consulting fees, or things she may or may not have done. That looks to be the like the next place. We’ll just have to see.”
Biographer Michael D’Antonio agreed that Ivanka is in danger.
“The other person who I think is in peril is Ivanka Trump,” D’Antonio said. “One of the things that Allen Weisselberg is in trouble for is taking money as a contractor and then claiming self-employed status so that he can get some of the retirement benefits that the tax code allows for self-employed people.”
“Well, we know that Ivanka Trump got quite significant sums paid to her as nonemployee compensation,” he added. “That freed the Trump Organization from paying part of her taxes, and it put her in a status that I think the IRS would have lots of questions about. So, these folks don’t know how to play the game straight. I think everything they do is crooked.”