Michigan University Law professor and former prosecutor Barbara McQuade is asking why the federal case was dropped against Donald Trump for inflating his wealth.
"Now that [the] judge has found Trump engaged in [a] massive asset inflation scheme to obtain loans and insurance, I am even more puzzled as to why [the] U.S. Attorney’s Office in SDNY walked away from it. Bank fraud is a federal criminal offense," she wrote on the social media site previously known as Twitter.
Richard Signorelli, former assistant U.S. Attorney at the Southern District of New York, offered his own take on why Trump wasn't prosecuted federally on fraud charges and he blamed Attorney General Merrick Garland for limiting the scope of special counsel Jack Smith's investigation to two other matters.
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"How about blaming the real culprit who has been in office since March 2021 and has walked away from any Trump crime except for 1/6 and the Docs cases," he wrote, including a photo of Garland. "The Special Counsel [appointment] letter from Garland only refers 1/6 and docs to Jack Smith, meaning that he decided to not prosecute Trump for his career of criminality. I condemn Garland and his chief enabler Lisa Monaco for total incompetence."
The fraud case, however, wasn't against Donald Trump the person or the president, but against the Trump Organization as a whole. The OLC opinion wouldn't apply to the company.
Lawyer George Conway, meanwhile, pointed the finger at former Attorney General Bill Barr and sarcastically joked that "it will forever be a mystery" why SDNY dropped the case.
