There are a lot of ways in which Donald Trump is legally vulnerable, and this week underscored that. Investigations of his business in New York and his attempts to overturn election results in Georgia both ramped up, and he lost a battle to keep information from the Jan. 6 committee. Let's review where he could be in trouble and for what, based on what we know about the big investigations looking at Trump and his business. Did his company dodge taxes? (Justin Lane/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock) | The attorney general of New York, where the Trump Organization is based, is investigating whether Trump undervalued his properties, such as his golf courses, so they could pony up less when it came time to pay taxes. The company and its chief financial officer were already indicted this summer for allegedly keeping two sets of books to dodge taxes. Those charges came from a similar, ongoing criminal investigation of the company led by the Manhattan district attorney. Did his company commit fraud? The New York attorney general is also looking at whether the Trump Organization overvalued his properties to banks to get better deals on loans. Attorney General Letitia James (D) hasn't alleged wrongdoing directly on the former president's part, but she's trying to get him and his children to talk under oath as she tries to find whether "widespread fraud" permeated the Trump Organization, my colleagues report. Did he illegally meddle in Georgia's election? Specifically, by calling the state's secretary of state and urging him to "find" just enough votes so he wouldn't lose the state to Joe Biden. A prosecutor in Atlanta is leading this case, and she is trying to set up a special grand jury, suggesting it's getting serous. Here, Trump has specifically been accused of wrongdoing, but it's unclear whether he would ever get prosecuted. Did he defame women who accused him of sexual assault? Trump is facing half a dozen lawsuits from people who allege he aggrieved them, including his niece Mary Trump, who alleges he defrauded her from her inheritance. There's a lawsuit by former Trump property tenants in New York alleging he jacked up the rent. And there's a lawsuit by E. Jean Carroll, who says Trump raped her in the 1990s and then defamed her when he said, as president, "She's not my type." If he loses legal wrangling over this case, he could have to provide a DNA sample and give a deposition. (The Biden administration is helping defend Trump on this, arguing that a president can't be sued for what he says on the job.) And then there's the Jan. 6 committee The House committee investigating the attack on the Capitol can't charge Trump with a crime. But it could politically wound him, right as he thinks about running for president again, by telling the fullest version yet of his efforts to overturn his election loss. They expect to finish up work sometime this year. Why it can be so hard to pin Trump down The fact Trump has been accused of a lot of wrongdoing but has never been charged frustrates his political opponents to no end. Timothy O'Brien is a Trump biographer and critic, and he told The Post that he thinks the legal system is more at fault than anything else: "Donald Trump has nine lives not because he's a master dodger, but because it's hard to prove fraud." Could this be the final March for Life under Roe v. Wade? The March for Life in D.C. on Friday. (Brenden Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images) | Today, abortion protesters took to the National Mall for the 49th March for Life, marking the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision. There is no federal law protecting abortion rights. It's up to the states to govern abortions, but for now they have to do it guided by the Supreme Court's protections to allow it up to halfway through a pregnancy. Maybe not for much longer. Here's why antiabortion activists are so excited. - The Supreme Court has ruled several times over the past 50 years that a woman has a right to an abortion before the fetus can live on its own, around 22 to 24 weeks. But a newly conservative Supreme Court has upheld, on procedural grounds, a Texas law banning abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected — so, basically, all abortions, since that's before most people know they're pregnant.
- And this Supreme Court seems open to upholding a law in Mississippi banning abortion after 15 weeks. We will learn what the justices decided in the coming months.
If the Mississippi law or some of it is upheld, abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy could quickly become illegal in as much as half the country. Several states are trying to copy Texas's ban. Either or both of those would significantly shift abortion rights in much of America. "We're praying this is the last march we ever have to do," Faith Boyd, an Idaho nurse at D.C.'s annual antiabortion March for Life on Friday, told The Post. |
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