Trump Wire Fraud Charges Would Be 'No Small Potatoes': Kirschner

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Trump Wire Fraud Charges Would Be 'No Small Potatoes': KirschnerThe former federal prosecutor said during the Friday episode of his Justice Matters podcast that a new development in "the ever-expanding criminal investigations" of Trump could land the ex-president in hot water. Trump, the leading 2024 GOP presidential candidate, faces 34 felony counts of business fraud in New York and could face additional criminal charges in Georgia and at the federal level.During Kirschner's podcast, he discussed a Friday report from The Washington Post that cited eight anonymous sources while claiming Special Counsel Jack Smith had issued a series of subpoenas that indicate he is investigating whether the Trump campaign committed wire fraud by fundraising off of false claims that the 2020 presidential election was "stolen" by Democrats and President Joe Biden.

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-wire-fraud-charges-would-no-small-potatoes-kirschner-1794541

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Demand the Department of Justice Prosecute the Trump Campaign for Wire Fraud over the Big Lie Rip-Off


The Trump campaign took $250 million in donations from supporters that it said would go to the Official Election Defense Fund to pay for legal fees for court cases to challenge and overturn the 2020 presidential election results.1

It was fraud.

The Big Lie Rip-Off was designed to milk as much money from Trump supporters as they possibly could with no regard for the truth.

In fact, the “Official Election Defense Fund” doesn’t even exist. Never has. Never will. Instead here are some highlights of how the $250 million in supporter donated money was spent:2

$100 million for “various fundraising expenses and advertising efforts aimed at raising even more money”

$5 million for the company that organized the Jan. 6 rally

$204,857 to the Trump Hotel Collection

$60,000 to Kimberly Guilfoyle, the fiancee of Trump's son Donald Trump Jr., to introduce Trump for two-and-a-half minutes at the "Stop the Steal" rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol

According to public record filings, only $13 million of the total was spent on legal expenses related to election cases.3

Almost $100 million in supporter-donated money was transferred to a separate entity called the "Save America" PAC that promotes Trump, pays for his rallies, travel, and expenses, and continues to raise money off of the Big Lie today.4

Now the New York Times reports the “Save America” PAC has spent nearly half a million dollars on law firms representing allies subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 Committee, raising serious questions of possible witness tampering and coercion.5

The bottom line is simple: When you lie to raise money over the internet, it’s wire fraud. It’s time for the Department of Justice (DOJ) to shut it all down and prosecute the Trump Campaign, the RNC, and the “Save America” PAC with wire fraud.

It wouldn’t be the first time a Trump organization was prosecuted for defrauding supporters.

In 2018, the Donald J. Trump Foundation, once billed as the charitable arm of Trump’s theoretical financial empire, was forced to dissolve and give away all its remaining assets under court supervision by the New York attorney general. The foundation was found to be engaging in “a shocking pattern of illegality.”6 In 2016, Trump also settled a fraud case against Trump University for $25 million dollars.7

Thousands of hard working people had more than $250 million dollars stolen by an American President in an elaborate fraud scheme exposed by the House Select Committee Investigating the January 6 Attack on the Capitol. Now it’s up to the DOJ to finish the job.


Demand the Department of Justice Prosecute the Trump Campaign for Wire Fraud over the Big Lie Rip-Off



https://actionnetwork.org/forms/demand-the-department-of-justice-prosecute-the-trump-campaign-for-wire-fraud-over-the-big-lie-rip-off?nowrapper=true&referrer=group-progress-america&source=group-progress-america
https://actionnetwork.org/forms/demand-the-department-of-justice-prosecute-the-trump-campaign-for-wire-fraud-over-the-big-lie-rip-off?nowrapper=true&referrer=group-progress-america&source=group-progress-america
https://actionnetwork.org/forms/demand-the-department-of-justice-prosecute-the-trump-campaign-for-wire-fraud-over-the-big-lie-rip-off?nowrapper=true&referrer=group-progress-america&source=group-progress-america
https://actionnetwork.org/forms/demand-the-department-of-justice-prosecute-the-trump-campaign-for-wire-fraud-over-the-big-lie-rip-off?nowrapper=true&referrer=group-progress-america&source=group-progress-america

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Why Jack Smith's reported wire fraud probe into Trump campaign could be a big deal


Wire fraud cases are common and can be fairly straightforward. That’s bad news for alleged grifters.

As if Donald Trump and his allies didn’t have enough to worry about, new reporting suggests the former president could have additional criminal concerns — namely, wire fraud. Because we have to specify which investigation into the 2024 Republican presidential candidate we’re talking about, this one comes in Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 probe.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday, citing eight anonymous sources, that federal prosecutors have recently “sought a wide range of documents related to fundraising after the 2020 election, looking to determine if former President Donald Trump or his advisers scammed donors by using false claims about voter fraud to raise money.” Smith’s team is “interested in whether anyone associated with the fundraising operation violated wire fraud laws, which make it illegal to make false representations over email to swindle people out of money,” the Post reported. (Neither NBC News nor MSNBC has independently verified the report.)

This follows the House Jan. 6 committee’s finding noted in December that “Trump and his Campaign ripped off supporters by raising more than $250 million by claiming they wanted to fight fraud they knew did not exist and to challenge an election they knew he lost.” The committee called it the Big Rip-Off, stemming from Trump's Big Lie.




https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/trump-wire-fraud-probe-2020-election-rcna79620
https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/trump-wire-fraud-probe-2020-election-rcna79620
https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/trump-wire-fraud-probe-2020-election-rcna79620
https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/trump-wire-fraud-probe-2020-election-rcna79620