we were young and innocent we thought
robert mueller might get donald trump
for um some ties to russia if he looked
at his businesses it turns out we know
now
that thanks largely to andrew weiss's
book he never looked at his businesses
but that was trump's reaction on the
front of all those assumptions made by
everyone
watching from the outside trump's saying
to reporters from the new york times
ostensibly so that
robert mueller would hear them that he
would view it as a red line
if anyone looked into his business
conduct or his businesses saying this is
about russia my businesses are over here
it's just it's along the same lines of
what i'm going to show you next his
um almost an ally of his calls it
reptilian instincts for
self-preservation
he himself knows that it's not pretty
under the hood
frank nicole look he's
i think trump has has misjudged his
exposure here there's a there's
hubris here and there's just bad
gambling luck so with regard to folks
like manafort
stone and others he believed that he
he um could control them
that they were loyal enough to him or
excuse me disloyal enough that he didn't
trust them that he needed to dangle the
pardons he needed pardons and
commutations
i think he's misjudged weisselberg and
others
i think he thought he was teflon this
wouldn't happen he was emboldened by
by mueller not going after finances
and i think he's misplayed this there's
two takeaways i take from
the very brief announcement from the new
york state attorney general yesterday
number one what does it mean when a
civil case at the ag level in the state
has turned criminal now has a criminal
component to it when you're talking
about the former president of the united
states
it means something more than the bare
minimum threshold
of reasonable suspicion that a crime has
occurred i don't think she would make
this announcement
lightly or if she merely had reasonable
suspicion
i think she's got strong evidence i
think she has specific and articulable
facts
that she's very confident in number two
the other part of that brief
announcement
was this coordination effort with the
manhattan district attorney what does
that mean strategically
it means that when you're investigating
some of the same people and their same
people are criminally exposed
and the same other people might be your
informants
your cooperating witnesses you've got to
come together as two prosecuted entities
and and not speak at opposite ends right
you've got to offer people the same deal
you really need to coordinate your
intelligence and if the same people are
exposed you've got to figure out the
division of labor
who's going after trump personally that
appears to be the d.a
in manhattan with tax issues who's going
after the organization
that appears to be the ag but make no
mistake for your viewers
just because it's an organizational
prosecution
does not mean human beings in that
organization can't go to prison as part
of that case in fact
as part of most white-collar crime cases
against corporation
there is heated discussion often between
agents and prosecutors
about whether or not someone deserves to
go to prison and what do they look at
for those criteria are there places are
there things in place to have prevented
this so is this a one-off
an anomaly or is there more systemic
fraud
is there evidence of intent my message
to the trump family
who are officers in the organization
today is if you don't all have
separate lawyers representing you on the
organization case
do not trust that one organization
attorney
who represents the organization's
interest to represent your interest is
time to separately lawyer up and realize
that you may have different interests
than your brother sister or father
um there's so much to unpack there let
me follow up with you frank i mean
i is enron the enron prosecution an
example of a business that was
prosecuted but individuals
went to jail is that the kind of
prosecution that they could be
imagining yeah absolutely
in the majority of big corporate white
collar cases there's a fine levied the
corporation's trying to get it right
they slipped up there were some
low-level people that screwed up even
intentionally and you don't see ceos and
officers go to prison
but in a case like this if they can show
systemic fraud knowledge intent
no fiduciary responsibility mechanisms
in place just no one really caring
about things getting done right and if
the intent goes to the top
you're going to see people go to prison
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you