Former President Donald Trump speaks at an America First Policy Institute agenda summit at the Marriott Marquis in Washington, Tuesday, July 26, 2022.
Josh Reynolds/AP Photo

Willis suffered a setback Monday when the judge overseeing her probe dinged her for a conflict of interest, noting that she had held a fundraiser for the political opponent of one of the false electors, state Sen. Burt Jones. But the investigation appears to be moving ahead, with depositions on the books over the next few weeks.

Willis is homing in on Trump’s effort to pressure Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” the number of votes he needed to overturn Biden’s victory in the state. Raffensperger resisted, describing his experience on that call during public testimony to the Jan. 6 committee last month.

Her probe into that episode appears to have expanded to include other elements of Trump’s bid to reverse his defeat, including the attempt to appoint false electors.

New York investigations

Trump’s decision in 2019 to give up his life-long legal residency in New York and move to Florida doesn’t seem to have lessened the intense interest prosecutors there have shown in his activities. An investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia James into Trump’s business dealings, particularly around real estate, has entered a critical phase.

In February, a state judge ordered the former president, son Donald Trump Jr. and daughter Ivanka Trump to sit for sworn depositions in the probe, which was triggered at least in part by former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen telling Congress that Trump systematically inflated the value of his properties when seeking bank loans and diminished the valuations for tax purposes.

The Trumps unsuccessfully fought the demands in court and were scheduled to give the depositions earlier this month, but those sessions were delayed after Donald Trump’s former wife Ivana died in a fall at her Manhattan apartment.

It’s unclear whether Trump or his children will actually answer questions posed by James’ aides or exercise their Fifth Amendment rights not to respond. James’ office did not comment further on timing for those depositions.

James has only limited criminal authority, so her investigation seems to be a precursor to a potential civil lawsuit against Trump or his business. Trump’s lawyers have stressed that James is cooperating with the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which has broader criminal powers.

After a lengthy investigation, prosecutors from that office filed criminal tax and fraud charges last year against Trump’s business empire and its longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg. Defense attorneys scoffed at the charges as trivial, including claims that the Trump Organization paid for apartment rentals and for Weisselberg’s grandchildren’s school tuition without reporting those amounts as income to employees.

The good news for Trump

One upside for the former president out of Gotham: The chances of the criminal tax and business fraud case expanding to cover more defendants or charges seem to have vanished in recent months.

When Alvin Bragg Jr. took over in January as Manhattan district attorney, he was reported to be skeptical of an aggressive effort to expand that case to include Trump and perhaps others as defendants. Indeed, Bragg was so dubious about those efforts that the lead prosecutors on the case, Mark Pomerantz and Carey Dunne, resigned abruptly in protest in February.

Pomerantz said in a resignation letter published by the New York Times that Trump was guilty of “numerous felony violations.” And the veteran prosecutor blasted Bragg for backing away from the case. “I and others believe that your decision not to authorize prosecution now will doom any future prospects that Mr. Trump will be prosecuted for the criminal conduct we have been investigating,” Pomerantz wrote.

The firm and Weisselberg pleaded not guilty to the charges and are awaiting trial in state court in Manhattan.

And another of the most formidable investigations Trump faced has all but vanished: the Manhattan district attorney’s probe into possible tax violations on the part of the former president.

When Bragg Jr.’s predecessor Cy Vance was district attorney, it appeared he had put together a courtroom-ready case against Trump. But after Bragg’s swearing-in this year, two top prosecutors focused on the office’s Trump probe resigned. They indicated that this was because Bragg had chosen not to pursue charges against the former president.