Investigations into the Trump Organization’s business practices are entering a new chapter and will “go as long as the facts and the law require,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg told CNN on Friday, even as he stressed that “a very important chapter” of the probe ended after the company was convicted and sentenced in a tax fraud scheme.
“It’ll go as long as the facts and the law require,” Bragg said when asked how much longer the years long investigation will continue. “But as I said today, we ended a very important chapter. So, a good part of the year was focused on this very, very consequential chapter and now we move on to the next chapter.”
The comments came shortly after the Trump Organization was fined $1.6 million – the maximum possible penalty – by a New York judge for running a decade-long tax fraud scheme. It’s the only judgment for a criminal conviction that has come close to former President Donald Trump, despite all of the investigations surrounding himself and his companies.
The Trump Corp. and Trump Payroll Corp. were convicted last month of 17 felonies, including tax fraud and falsifying business records.
Though Bragg on Friday wouldn’t reveal details of what his office is still investigating, CNN previously reported that prosecutors’ focus has returned to the company’s involvement in hush-money payments made to silence adult film star Stormy Daniels from going public with an affair with Trump just before the 2016 election, people familiar with the matter said. Trump has denied the affair.
Prosecutors are also looking into potential insurance fraud after new material came to light from the New York attorney general’s civil investigation into the accuracy of the Trump Org.’s financial statements, the people said.
“The most important thing to me is the integrity of our ongoing investigation,” Bragg told CNN. “I know there’s so much in the public domain, but as to what’s ongoing and not in the public domain, it’s going to remain so until we’re able to speak at the close of our investigation.”
