Why the Trump Organization indictment 'feels a bit like charging Al Capone' with tax evasion
Thursday's indictment of the Trump Organization and its CFO Allen Weisselberg for fraud and tax crimes (they have both pleaded not guilty) is "not nothing," Quinta Jurecic, a senior editor at Lawfare and Brookings Institution fellow, writes for The Atlantic. But, she adds, it does feel "strangely unsatisfactory," akin to the infamous Prohibition-era gangster Al Capone getting charged "with, well, tax evasion," rather than more extreme crimes.
"It does the job legally, but seems, in a profound way, to miss the point," Jurecic writes. "There's something absurd about the fact that after years of baroque wrondgoing by [former President Donald] Trump, some possibly criminal and some not — flouting campaign finance laws, obstructing justice during the Mueller investigation, blackmailing the president of Ukraine, egging on an insurrection, and that's only from 2016 onward — the first criminal charge related to [Trump] or his business speaks to none of these acts, and doesn't even name Trump himself as a defendant." Read more of Jurecic's thoughts on the indictment at The Atlantic.
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