The Trump Mazars scandal is the kind of problem that could end the company or put someone in jail: biographer
President Donald Trump was dropped by his financial firm, Mazars USA. This is expected to cause a severe problem for Donald Trump Jr. and Melania Trump, as their tax documents were supposed to be filed on Feb. 15, 2022.
Speaking to MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell, former Trump biographer Tim O'Brien noted that problems like this are the kinds of things that can lead to businesses being closed or prison time.
O'Donnell mentioned the son of Trump Org. security chief Matthew Calamari, who had an apartment gifted to him. In the Mazars letter, they claimed the Trump Organization did not, "after repeated requests, provide information regarding Calamari’s apartment (and misspelled Calamari’s last name)," the Washington Post reported. The apartment must be accounted for because it's valued at over $15,000. It's unclear if it was a gift or it was being paid for by Trump as an expense.
“We believe the only information left to complete those returns is the information regarding the Matt Calimari Jr. [sic] apartment,” Mazars' executive William J. Kelly wrote. “As you know, Donald Bender has been asking for this information for several months but has not received it.”
"And what the Mazars is saying is they believe they won't get the answer," said O'Brien. "I think what we can infer from that is that they believe that Trump is either willingly misleading them or lying to them, and whatever the case may be, they don't want to represent him anymore. These issues of free apartments for employees in the Trump Organization was front and center with Allen Weisselberg's indictment. And some other things investigators were looking at there. The Weisselberg children also got freebies from the Trump Organizations. It's relatively small in the larger scheme of things, but it's enough to put people in the crosshairs and enough to potentially cause some of these people to flip against Trump and provide further evidence, and it's clearly enough for his accounting firm to head for the exits."
He went on to say that what he found interesting was what took the Mazars so long because all of these issues were published in O'Brien's book years ago. Trump sued O'Brien and used a Mazars' document to prove his finances. In that case, they said that the documents "didn't pass the sniff test for accounting documents, but they would stand behind them."
It has been 15 years since then, and now the Mazars are pulling back because of the New York attorney general's investigation.
"I think the firm is worried about its own criminal exposure and civil exposure in this investigations, and they're not going to go down with Donald Trump. If it comes to that," O'Brien continued. "And I think this is a very pivotal moment because even if these prosecutions don't play out, this is a real threat to the well-being of the business. If the Trumps cannot get accountants to sign off on their financial statements, there is no bank that is going to be willing to do business with them. At least domestically."
O'Brien explained that the Mazars aren't going to take the fall for Trump over an apartment gifted to Calamari's son if that was the case.
"They have finally had enough. I think this is just the tip of the iceberg and all of it," he said. "And these are the kind of wedges that open the door. A crime is a crime regardless of the amount of money involved in it. And I think that they have to be running in circles right now inside the Trump Organization, given what's occurred today. This is going to end up being one of those pivotal days if we look back on these investigations, that they end up getting the kind of traction that causes the company to go out of business or winds up with any of the trumps in jail. It's going to be moments like this that are going to be part of that narrative."
See the full conversation below:
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