Apparently it has moved from civil to criminal. Just announced on MSNBC. No link yet.
Lawrence O'Donnell will be discussing it shortly.
This ought to do it. They could never get him when he was just a citizen of New York renovating buildings, but now that he was president, and moved to Florida - well, now they got the evidence.
They couldn’t “get him” because prosecutors had no access to his tax returns or his financial records. Without “reasonable cause” they had no evidence upon which to ask for them.
The prosecution of Michael Cohen for campaign finance violations in paying hush money to Stormy Daniels, and lying to both Congress and in FBI about Trump’s Moscow Project, opened the “probable cause” door. As did Cohen’s revised testimony to Congress about his participation in bank fraud, tax fraud, and wire fraud in the Trump corporation’s day to day operations.
The Trump Family Trust is facing tax fraud allegations in the handling of the Fred Trump Estate, as well as a lawsuit from Mary Trump and her brother that her Aunts and uncles defrauded them out their father’s 1/5 share of their Grandfather’s $300 estate.
Then there’s the tax shenanigans with the upstate New York property.
Trump made a lot of enemies in New York and New Jersey, with his bankruptcy scams, stiffing contractors, and clogging the courts with his nuisance law suits.
Everybody knew he was dirty - he bragged about the illegal shit he did, but nobody could prove it. There was no evidence. Now they have evidence.