Trump legal issues: What to know about the Mar-a-Lago raid, tax case
Yahoo Finance's Alexis Keenan breaks down the legal issues surrounding former President Trump.
Video Transcript
- Well, let's continue that conversation about the legal problems down in Mar-a-Lago. Yahoo Finance's Alexis Keenan joins us on set for that conversation. Obviously, a lot of eyes on the affidavit, right? What needs to happen for that to be released, and I imagine the classified versus declassified significance is going to be very important for that.
ALEXIS KEENAN: So really it's the focus on this affidavit, right? So the part that has been released so far-- or parts, I should say-- is one, the search warrant itself, and also the list of items that were seized. So the affidavit, though, that's a different beast because that is the narrative of why exactly law enforcement and the DOJ is making its case. It's the DOJ's case to the judge to say why the judge should issue this warrant to go into Mar-a-Lago. So that is where the really breadth of their case, at least at this stage, will be detailed.
So that would tell us a lot more about why they wanted those, and whether or not their case is very strong against Donald Trump, though exceptions can be made. We don't know, right? We don't know if the DOJ A, to release this affidavit. We don't know if President Trump would agree if the DOJ went to him and said, do you object? The last time, President Trump said, no, I don't object to these documents being released. That could be different on this different round.
Either way, a judge, again, would have to be the one to make that determination. Cases where there is a great public interest, those can be exceptions, where the documents are released and the judge will say, OK. And also, the Justice Department-- or any other law enforcement agency, for that matter-- could say that they want to substantiate their reasoning because in this case, you have President Trump and others attacking the justification for this search warrant. And so in order to combat that and say we do have some evidence and reasoning for going into Mar-a-Lago, that could be a reason as well.
- Well, I was going to say, the context of that is important, because we have seen the narrative shift on the Republican side this weekend. A lot of lawmakers came out and said, look, we just want that affidavit unsealed so we know for sure what the justification was going, into Mar-a-Lago. This isn't the only legal problem for the former President. We're talking about another case with the Trump Organization that you're following.
ALEXIS KEENAN: Right. So on Friday, the Trump Organization and its long term CFO Allen Weisselberg-- the two of those parties are defending a case against the Manhattan DA. And that is a case involving whether or not there was knowledge by the organization-- or by Weisselberg-- that there were different valuations given to real estate, depending on whether it was for tax purposes, tax filings, versus applications for mortgages. So in the case of mortgages, you want those valuations to be high. And in the case of taxes, many times you want them to have low valuations, so that they're not required to have a big tax burden.
But in this case, on Friday, the two defendants they lost their motion to dismiss the case. And so that means the case will be able to go forward. A trial date is already set of October 24. And that's a pretty rapid pace for the DA's office. So this case is going to-- if that trial date sticks-- it's going to come to fruition really quickly here, and that will then impact, likely, a civil case.
So this case that I'm talking about, that's a criminal tax fraud case. Then on top of that is a little bit of a mirror case by the New York State AG's office. And that one is making similar claims, but they're civil claims. So they don't have prison time that could be attached to them. But many things about that first case will impact the second. So a lot still to happen in those business cases for President Trump.
- It's so hard to keep track of all of them. That's why we have you on set to help me.
ALEXIS KEENAN: I'm trying. I'm trying.
- Yahoo Finance's Alexis Keenan. Thanks so much.
