Source: Politics<\/p>\n
Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday lashed out at New York Attorney General Letitia James following news that her office is assisting the Manhattan district attorney in a criminal investigation of the Trump Organization.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is nothing more corrupt than an investigation that is in desperate search of a crime,\u201d Trump said in a statement published through his Save America PAC and posted on his blog<\/a>. \u201cBut, make no mistake, that is exactly what is happening here.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cIf you can run for a prosecutor\u2019s office pledging to take out your enemies, and be elected to that job by partisan voters who wish to enact political retribution, then we are no longer a free constitutional democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n James\u2019 office has been conducting a yearslong civil inquiry into Trump\u2019s business dealings. That is ongoing but has subsequently evolved<\/a> and is \u201cno longer purely civil in nature,\u201d according to a spokesperson for James.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are now actively investigating the Trump Organization in a criminal capacity, along with the Manhattan D.A.,\u201d spokesperson Fabien Levy said Tuesday.<\/p>\n The state Attorney General\u2019s Office declined to comment Wednesday on Trump\u2019s statement.<\/p>\n The attorney general had been investigating allegations that Trump and his family intentionally misreported property values for tax purposes, while Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. has been in a protracted legal battle with Trump to obtain his past tax returns and other financial records as part of an ongoing fraud probe.<\/p>\n Trump has denied any wrongdoing and claimed to be a victim of a wide-ranging \u201cwitch hunt\u201d \u2014 a label he has affixed to the two impeachment proceedings against him, as well as the special counsel investigation that loomed over much of his four years in office.<\/p>\n \u201cThat is what these investigations are all about \u2014 a continuation of the greatest political Witch Hunt in the history of the United States,\u201d Trump said on Wednesday. \u201cWorking in conjunction with Washington, these Democrats want to silence and cancel millions of voters because they don\u2019t want \u2018Trump\u2019 to run again.\u201d<\/p>\n The 900-plus-word statement is easily one of the longest he\u2019s issued since leaving office in January and reflects the highly combustible nature of the investigations into his business affairs \u2014 long one of Trump\u2019s biggest third rails.<\/p>\n Investigators have reportedly been applying considerable pressure on Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization\u2019s longtime chief financial officer, ostensibly to get him to divulge information related to these probes. Jen Weisselberg, his former daughter-in-law, has said she is cooperating<\/a> with both investigations.<\/p>\n Trump blasted James for statements she made prior to winning office in 2018 about holding the then-president accountable for his potential misdeeds and knocked Vance\u2019s office for relying on information from Trump\u2019s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen \u2014 whom Trump has soured on in the years since Cohen turned against him and pleaded guilty to several felony counts<\/a>.<\/p>\n The former president accused investigators of trying to deflect from the level of crime in their jurisdiction, and to weaken him politically as he continues to be an outsize force in the Republican Party.<\/p>\n \u201cIf these prosecutors focused on real issues, crime would be obliterated, and New York would be great and free again!\u201d he said in the blog post.<\/p>\n It is unclear whether Vance will be around to see through the investigation to its eventual conclusion, since he is not running for reelection and his term expires at the end of the year.<\/p>\n