'Now we're going to trial': Trump kids suffer major legal blow in DC inauguration investigation
According to a report from the Daily Beast, while Donald Trump and his family were reeling from a New York Times report that the Trump Organization's accounting firm was severing ties with the company while casting doubts about the past ten year's worth of financial statements, the family suffered another stinging blow in a federal courthouse in Washington, D.C.
As the Beast's Jose Pagliery reported, the Trump organization -- and specifically Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump -- are now facing the prospect of going to trial in a case involving the misuse of inauguration donations back in 2017.
According to the report, Washington D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine is seeking to take Donald Trump and members of his family to court over more than a million dollars that the prosecutor maintains was used illegally.
Previously "D.C. Superior Court Judge José M. López appeared to ruin the local attorney general’s investigation when he decided the case could proceed—but dropped the Trump Organization from the lawsuit. His odd reasoning was that Donald Trump Jr.’s financier friend, Gentry Beach, had made a deal on behalf of the Trump Organization without the company’s permission and therefore the company wasn’t really at fault," report notes.
However, on Monday, newly appointed Judge Yvonne Williams on Monday overruled López, saying there is enough evidence to include the Trump family members by writing, "It was erroneous for the court to rule against the district based on the district’s failure to depose… Mr. Beach… when the Court had [withheld] ruling on the district’s request to conduct that very discovery."
According to Pagliery, that puts the Trump kids squarely back in the middle of the case.
"Racine seeks to have the Trump Hotel D.C. pay back nearly $1 million in funds that were spent on what local government investigators describe as self-dealing by the incoming president’s adult kids—Don Jr., Ivanka, and Eric Trump—to personally benefit themselves using money meant to celebrate the nation’s peaceful transfer of power," Pagliery reported. "At the crux of that alleged scheme is an episode in which the Trump Organization reserved a block of rooms at the Loews Madison Hotel, only to stiff the hotel when more than a dozen expected guests didn’t show up. The company managed to dodge a credit collection agency and pushed off the $49,358 bill to the nonprofit presidential inaugural committee, the PIC."
The report notes that Racine celebrated the ruling by announcing his next steps, tweeting out, "Our lawsuit is moving forward fully intact & full steam ahead. We sued the inaugural committee for misusing funds to enrich the Trump family. Now we’re going to trial.”
You can read more here.
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