Expert Says Trump Organization Indictments Could Point To Racketeering Charges

Legal expert David Cay Johnston believes that the Trump Organization and Weisselberg indictments this week were not only the tip of the iceberg, but they might also point to broader racketeering charges against the Trump family in the near future. Johnston points to the "conspiracy" part of the indictments, which would indicate that the plan didn't just involve Weisselberg. Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

Well, now that some of the dust has settled over the indictments for both the Trump organization and their CFO Allen Weisselberg. We can get a closer look at what actually took place this week. Does it mean anything? Does it mean nothing? And here it is. Yes. It means something. Now the charges against Weisselberg sure he didn't pay taxes on $1.7 million worth of gifts. And the Trump organization was indicted for, you know, this big conspiracy to not pay taxes. And that really is the key word. According to legal experts, conspiracy, that's the thing we need to be focused on. Weisselberg not paying taxes on 1.7 million worth of gifts. That's relatively small potatoes. I mean, let's be honest. That's not something that the federal government or the state government actually, uh, makes a huge case about you. Don't impanel a grand jury to pop a guy for not paying taxes on under $2 million.

I'm sorry. You don't do it. What I still believe is happening is at their hidden Weisselberg with all these charges, that again, in the eyes of the law is relatively minor. Um, in order to get them to flip, like, Hey, we can drop these things against you. We'll just pop it for this one. You pay a fine, you'll be good. If you flip on Trump still firmly believed that that is what's happening. The organization itself though, those indictments mean something. And again, it all comes back to that word conspiracy. And when we listened to what legal expert David K. Johnston has to say starts to make a lot more sense as to why that word conspiracy is central here. Here's what David K. Johnston legal expert had to say on MSNBC this week. Uh, it's an affirmative it's N a F a affirmative, excuse me, defense. If you're a bookkeeper or a clerk and you just do what you're told, uh, unless you've benefited from the fraud.

Clearly the indictment says Allen Weisselberg was a primary beneficiary of this tax fraud. So he doesn't have that as a defense. I think more broadly that by indicting the Trump organization is a further indication that they are looking at bringing a New York state racketeering charge in our article 46, a four 60 case, which would have very significant ramifications, including the power to get a receiver, to take control of the Trump organization. Now, what Johnston is basically said here, and he's tied in a lot of other pieces is that the conspiracy is all a part of the racketeering charges. Racketeering charges typically do have to come from the state. The state did get involved a couple months ago, as you know, everybody already knows. So that could be what this is pointing to in that could explain also why the state decided to get involved in the case.

And there's another thing. There's another thing that a lot of people seem to overlook, but it pointed out. And that is mentioned in all those pages of indictments right next to Weisselberg was a phrase. And that phrase referred to another person. And that person was identified as unindicted co-conspirator number one, unindicted co-conspirator. So there is at least one other person who was involved with this scheme, wonder who that would be. I don't know, but I'm willing to bet that the last name of that individual happens to be Trump. And that's where it all ties back together. We didn't get a whole lot of new information from these indictments. You know, we got a pretty decent picture of some of the fraud and some of the scheming that's been taking place for at least 15 years that we know of, but the big fish are still out there.

And if legal experts are correct those big fish, they're still going to be real. Then eventually we just got to get the smaller ones. Basically the bait is what's happening here. You know, we've rounded up the bait, we've got our Weisselberg, we've got his indictments. This guy doesn't want to go to jail. We popped him with a lot more charges than, you know, we probably could have let some of them slide, but maybe we'll keep them on there and then drop them later as part of a plea deal, who knows Weisselberg has a basically planned on pleading, not guilty.