NEW YORK — Former President Donald Trump wasn’t facing prison time when a Manhattan jury convicted his Trump Organization this week in a tax fraud scheme that stretched back more than 15 years.
And the penalties are relatively paltry: a possible fine of $1.62 million along with a brief jail sentence for longtime Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg, who cut a plea deal in exchange for his testimony.
But the defeat could still loom large for Trump as he seeks to make a stunning political comeback and restore the luster to his tarnished business empire.
What might happen to Trump and his company?
Fines of up to $1.62 million could be imposed when a judge sentences the Trump companies on Jan. 13. That is a relative drop in the bucket for the Trump Organization, which owns the two smaller entities and claims annual revenue in the hundreds of millions.
Neither Trump nor his relatives face any possible punishments.
More concerning to Trump is the possibility that the guilty verdict might embolden Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to jump-start an effort to prosecute Trump himself for his alleged role in the scheme.
Bragg, who previously expressed doubt about the strength of a possible case against Trump, now says the probe is “active and ongoing,” words that could strike fear into Trump after a jury proclaimed his company’s guilt in the same investigation.
What was the case about?
Two Trump companies were found guilty of paying executives part of their salaries off the books to avoid taxes for both sides.
The companies footed annual bills for apartments, leased luxury cars and private school tuition to the tune of more than $1 million for Weisselberg and other executives.
Although the government did not charge Trump himself or his children, prosecutors left little doubt that they knew of or approved the scheme.
Does Trump have any chance of winning an appeal?
Yes. Like any complicated corporate fraud case, the Trump Organization prosecution involved many inferences about the complex interrelated web of actions taken by individuals.
Legal eagles say that makes the verdict vulnerable to second-guessing by higher courts.
Will the verdict hurt Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign?
It seems unlikely.
Trump has survived and even thrived in the face of far more serious and direct accusations.
With Trump already an announced 2024 GOP presidential candidate, the more potent political threat would likely come from Republican rivals directly challenging him after kow-towing to him in recent years.
Could the verdict boost the civil lawsuit led by NY Attorney General Letitia James?
This could be the biggest danger to Trump himself stemming from the conviction, even though they are not directly related.
James has sued Trump — along with the company and three of his grown children — for $250 million, accusing them of brazenly overvaluing properties by billions of dollars to defraud banks and other entities.
A judge could bar the Trumps from running their family business or bar the company from doing business in New York, a potential death knell for the Trump Organization.
In a sign of the seriousness of the stakes, the judge has already appointed an independent overseer to make sure the company doesn’t move assets out of state to dodge a day of reckoning.
Does this have anything to do with Jan. 6 or the Mar-a-Lago documents case?
No. The alleged high jinks involving Trump’s business empire is unrelated to either the investigation into his effort to stay in power after losing the 2020 election or improperly taking top secret White House documents to his Florida resort home.
Both of those scandals are being investigated by federal grand juries under the direction of newly minted special counsel Jack Smith, a former Brooklyn federal prosecutor.
Most legal analysts believe Trump is far closer to facing a possible indictment in the relatively clear-cut documents case, while the Jan. 6 probe is still far from an endgame.
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