Why the Trump Organization indictment 'feels a bit like charging Al Capone' with tax evasion

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Tim O'Donnell, Contributing Writer
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Allen Weisselberg.
Allen Weisselberg. AP Photo/Seth Wenig,Pool

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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