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      Trump Taxes: Here's What's Next in the Manhattan D.A.'s Investigation

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Trump’s TaxesWhat’s NextOur InvestigationA 2016 WindfallProfiting From FameTimeline18 Key FindingsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHere’s What’s Next in the Trump Taxes InvestigationA Supreme Court ruling has paved the way for prosecutors to begin combing through Mr. Trump’s financial records.Former President Donald J. Trump first sued to block a subpoena seeking his personal and corporate taxes in 2019.Credit…Pete Marovich for The New York TimesWilliam K. Rashbaum, Ben Protess and Feb. 22, 2021Updated 2:35 p.m. ETTerabytes of data. Dozens of prosecutors, investigators and forensic accountants sifting through millions of pages of financial documents. An outside consulting firm drilling down on the arcana of commercial real estate and tax strategies.That is the monumental task that lies ahead in the Manhattan district attorney’s criminal investigation into former President Donald J. Trump and his family business after a United States Supreme Court order on Monday cleared the way for prosecutors to obtain eight years worth of Mr. Trump’s tax returns and other financial records.The brief, unsigned order was a resounding victory for the prosecutors and defeat for Mr. Trump, capping his bitter and protracted legal battle to block the release of the records — an effort that twice reached the Supreme Court — and delivering a jolt to the prosecutors’ efforts after the lawsuit stalled them for more than a year.The investigation is one of two known criminal inquiries into Mr. Trump, the other coming from prosecutors in Georgia scrutinizing Mr. Trump’s effort to persuade local officials to undo the election results there. When Mr. Trump left office, he lost the protection against indictment that the presidency afforded him.The district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., issued a terse statement, saying: “The work continues.” A spokesman for his office declined to comment further on the investigation.The crucial next phase in the Manhattan inquiry will begin in earnest this week when investigators for the district attorney’s office collect the records from the law firm that represents Mr. Trump’s accountants, Mazars USA, according to people with knowledge of the matter, as well as former prosecutors and other experts who described the next steps on the condition of anonymity.The investigators, carrying a copy of the August 2019 grand jury subpoena that was at the heart of the lawsuit, will go to the law firm’s office in New York’s Westchester County. They will leave with a vast trove of digital copies of the returns, reams of financial statements and other records and communications relating to Mr. Trump’s taxes and those of his businesses.Then, the investigators will deliver the mass of data to the office of Mr. Vance, where the team of prosecutors, forensic accountants and analysts have been investigating Mr. Trump and his companies for a wide range of possible financial crimes. Mr. Vance, a Democrat, has been examining whether Mr. Trump, his company and its employees committed insurance, tax and banking fraud, among other crimes, people with knowledge of the matter have said.Even before the Supreme Court ruling, the investigation had heated up, with Mr. Vance’s office issuing more than a dozen subpoenas in recent months and interviewing witnesses, including employees of Deutsche Bank, one of Mr. Trump’s top lenders.The subpoenas relate to a central aspect of Mr. Vance’s inquiry, which focuses on whether Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, inflated the value of some of his signature properties to obtain the best possible loans, while lowballing the values to reduce property taxes, people with knowledge of the matter have said. The prosecutors are also examining the Trump Organization’s statements to insurance companies about the value of various assets.Now armed with the records from Mazars — including the tax returns, the business records on which they are based and communications between the Trump Organization and its accountants — prosecutors will be able to see a fuller picture of potential discrepancies between what the company told its lenders and tax authorities.The prosecutors have also subpoenaed the Trump Organization for records related to tax write-offs on millions of dollars in consulting fees, some of which appear to have gone to the president’s elder daughter, Ivanka Trump, an arrangement first reported by The New York Times. The company turned over some of those records last month, two people with knowledge of the matter said, though the prosecutors have questioned whether the company has fully responded to the subpoena.It remains unclear whether the prosecutors will ultimately file charges against Mr. Trump, the company, or any of its executives, including Mr. Trump’s two adult sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump.In a lengthy and angry statement that included a reiteration of many of his familiar grievances, Mr. Trump lashed out at the Supreme Court and the investigation, which he characterized as “a continuation of the greatest political Witch Hunt in the history of our Country.” He added: “For more than two years, New York City has been looking at almost every transaction I’ve ever done, including seeking tax returns which were done by among the biggest and most prestigious law and accounting firms in the U.S.”Mr. Trump’s lawyers are likely to argue to prosecutors that Mr. Trump could not have duped Deutsche Bank because the bank, a sophisticated financial player, conducted its own analysis of Mr. Trump’s properties.Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, has been investigating Mr. Trump and his companies for a wide range of possible financial crimes.Credit…Eduardo Munoz/ReutersMazars said in a statement that it was aware of the new ruling. “As we have maintained throughout this process, Mazars remains committed to fulfilling all of our professional and legal obligations,” the statement said.The biggest challenge for Mr. Vance’s prosecutors will be to piece together the jigsaw puzzle of tax records, financial statements and the supporting documents Mr. Trump’s companies provided to the accountants. Early this month, Mr. Vance enlisted a prominent figure in New York legal circles, Mark F. Pomerantz, to help with the investigation. Mr. Pomerantz, a former senior federal prosecutor with significant experience both investigating and defending complex white-collar and organized crime cases, will handle interactions with key witnesses, among other tasks.For additional help, Mr. Vance’s office has hired FTI, a large consulting company that can analyze some of the industries in which Mr. Trump’s companies operate, including commercial real estate, as well as tax issues, people with knowledge of the matter said.The firm will also load the trove of records into a data analysis and document management system that it can use to explore them and seek patterns in support of the investigation, the people said.The action by the Supreme Court justices, who without noted dissent denied Mr. Trump an emergency stay so the court could fully review issues in the case for a second time, will not put Mr. Trump’s tax returns in the hands of Congress or make them automatically public. Grand jury secrecy laws will keep the records private unless Mr. Vance’s office files charges and enters the documents into evidence at a trial.The public has already learned a great deal about Mr. Trump’s taxes through other means. The New York Times obtained tax-return data extending over more than two decades for Mr. Trump and the hundreds of companies that make up his business organization, including detailed information from his first two years in office.The Times published a series of investigative articles last year based on an analysis of the data showing that Mr. Trump paid virtually no income tax for many years and that he is currently under an audit in which an adverse ruling could cost him more than $100 million. He and his companies file separate tax returns and employ complicated and sometimes aggressive tax strategies, the investigation found.But the Supreme Court’s action set in motion a series of events that could lead to the extraordinary possibility of a criminal trial for former president. At a minimum, the ruling wrests from Mr. Trump control of his most closely held financial records and the power to decide when, if ever, they would be made available for public inspection.Mr. Trump and his lawyers have long fought to keep the records secret. After promising during the 2016 campaign that he would release his tax returns, as every presidential candidate has done for at least 40 years, he refused to do so, providing a persistent line of criticism for Democrats and other adversaries.In addition to fighting the subpoena from Mr. Vance’s office in court, Mr. Trump sued to block the congressional subpoena and successfully challenged a California law requiring presidential primary candidates to release their returns.The Supreme Court’s ruling comes nearly 18 months after Mr. Trump first sued Mr. Vance, seeking to block the subpoena from his office and spurring a legal battle that reached the Supreme Court for the first time last summer. In a landmark decision in July, the court rejected Mr. Trump’s argument that as a sitting president, he was immune from investigation. The case was argued by Mr. Vance’s general counsel, Carey Dunne, who is helping lead the investigation.But the court said Mr. Trump could challenge the subpoena on other grounds, such as its relevance and scope. Mr. Trump then launched a new legal fight, arguing that the subpoena was overly broad and amounted to political harassment. After losing that argument in the lower courts, Mr. Trump asked the Supreme Court to delay enforcement of Mr. Vance’s subpoena until it could decide whether to hear Mr. Trump’s appeal.It was that request that the Supreme Court denied, effectively ending the former president’s legal quest, legal experts said.“Trump will not be given deference as a former president,” said Anne Milgram, a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan who later served as New Jersey’s attorney general. “Under the eyes of the laws of the state of New York, he has the same rights as others in the state. Neither more nor less.”Reed Brodsky, a longtime white-collar defense lawyer and former federal prosecutor, said that Mr. Trump’s lawyers will likely tell him that further attempts to block the subpoena could undermine their ability to argue the merits of his defense.“They’re at risk, if they continue to make arguments that are frivolous, of undercutting their credibility,” Mr. Brodsky said.Jonah E. Bromwich and Maggie Haberman contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Accountability After Trump

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyAccountability After TrumpHow can America rebuild democracy’s guardrails and hold the past administration to account for its lawlessness?The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.Dec. 19, 2020Credit…Damon Winter/The New York TimesAfter any major national disaster or failure of government, it’s essential to study what happened and why, if for no other reason than to enact laws and policies aimed at preventing the same thing from happening again. From the Warren Report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy to the Church Committee in the wake of the Watergate scandal, from the commission on the Sept. 11 attacks to the commission on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, a thorough official reckoning makes for good government.What could accountability look like in 2021? How does American democracy confront the scale of the damage wrought by the departing president — the brazen obliteration of norms, the abundant examples of criminal behavior, the repeated corruption and abuses of power by the highest officeholder in the land, even after he was impeached?In short, how does America prevent the next Trump administration if it can’t properly hold the current one to account?This is the task facing the country and the next administration, as Joe Biden prepares to assume the presidency after running, and winning, on a platform of national unity and healing. Does restoring the soul of America require an exorcism of the past four years? Or would that only deepen the nation’s divisions, making it impossible to move forward?In a country as polarized as the United States in 2020, making even incremental progress on pressing issues would be a win. We’ve urged Mr. Biden to champion an agenda based on decency. The first step is to dial down the culture wars wherever possible, then pursue a policy agenda where there is ample common ground. But Mr. Biden should also champion accountability after four years that tested the outer limits of what America’s democracy could handle.Credit…Damon Winter/The New York TimesHis victory is itself a powerful form of accountability. A majority of American voters, given the chance to render their verdict on one term of President Trump, rejected his bid for another. Yet defeating Mr. Trump at the polls was only the first step toward recalibrating the country’s moral compass. Two more challenges remain: The first, determining how to investigate the past administration. The second, determining how to ensure that subsequent presidents face more formidable obstacles to wrongdoing than Mr. Trump faced.Any honest accounting of the past four years needs to begin by establishing a shared set of facts about what happened. There is ample evidence already that Mr. Trump and some of his top allies may have broken multiple federal laws by committing campaign-finance violations, lying to federal investigators and obstructing justice, to name a few. Even if he is not prosecuted by federal authorities, Mr. Trump and his businesses face at least two separate tax-fraud investigations in New York. Many of Mr. Trump’s associates have already been convicted of various crimes.Yet there are still many lingering questions, foremost among them: Did the president’s business interests influence his conduct of foreign and domestic policy? The American people have a right to know if that was so.There are also powerful arguments against an administration investigating and prosecuting its opponent. No matter how strong the evidence or how independent Mr. Biden’s attorney general, it will inevitably look to half the country like a political hit job. Perhaps that shouldn’t matter, but from a practical standpoint it’s hard to convince Americans that the Justice Department is not politicized when it’s prosecuting the preceding administration.Then there’s the issue of triage. The moment Mr. Biden takes office he will be saddled with a staggering pileup of emergencies demanding his immediate attention: a pandemic killing thousands of Americans daily; a crippled economy, mass unemployment and miles-long food lines; a worsening climate crisis; and the growing threat of right-wing terrorism and racist violence. Then there was this week’s revelation that the Russian government is behind a huge, monthslong cyberattack on dozens of federal agencies and companies, posing what officials called a “grave risk” to the federal government.Despite the challenges, the nation has to move forward.Many of the most needed reforms fall into the same category as those that were adopted in the aftermath of Watergate: reducing the power of the presidency and re-empowering institutions, like Congress, that are supposed to serve as checks on an imperious executive. Those reforms managed to hold the line for a while, but they turned out to be ineffective at reining in a president with Mr. Trump’s sheer tenacity and disregard for the rule of law. While Mr. Trump failed to fully exploit their weaknesses, a more devious and competent demagogue would be much more likely to succeed.Corruption and abuse of power are the most urgent issues in need of addressing.Four years into Mr. Trump’s presidency and nearly five years since he promised to release his full tax returns, the American people still don’t know how much his personal financial interests and entanglements are intertwined with his administration’s domestic- and foreign-policy decisions. He has an affection for strongmen, but is his solicitousness toward leaders like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman a result of something more mercenary? New laws compelling all presidential candidates to release at least 10 years of their tax returns, as well as a comprehensive list of any possible conflicts of interest, financial and otherwise, should be an obvious step toward reform. Legislation should also bar presidents from being involved in overseeing any business while serving in office.These reforms would need to apply throughout the executive branch. As the nation has seen, Mr. Trump’s administration has been awash from the start in self-dealing, ethical investigations and scandals. From cabinet secretaries to agency heads, the list is long, and likely incomplete.The second major area for reform involves presidential abuse of power, which includes everything from violations of the Hatch Act to the destruction of presidential records. The larger concern is the politicization of law enforcement. Mr. Trump was open in his belief that the Justice Department should do his bidding. He pressured his attorneys general, from Jeff Sessions through William Barr, to protect him and his allies and prosecute his perceived enemies. Sometimes they consented. Other times they resisted. But if law enforcement is to operate fairly and effectively, the American people have to see it as independent from politics.Mr. Trump has also abused his power by pardoning friends and associates who have been convicted of serious crimes. More recently he has floated granting pre-emptive pardons to family members and even himself, which may be unconstitutional. Mr. Trump isn’t the first to test the pardon power’s limits, but he has politicized and personalized it to an unparalleled degree. Since the power is essentially absolute, any meaningful change to it would require a constitutional amendment.As for the other reforms, some can be accomplished through executive orders, more stringent regulations or internal agency memos. But the most lasting will have to be enacted through federal laws, like the Protecting Our Democracy Act, a bill Democrats in the House of Representatives introduced in September. The legislation includes many measures that Republicans have supported in the past. Among other things, it would prohibit self-pardons, give Congress more power to enforce subpoenas, reduce the chance of politically motivated prosecutions by requiring more transparency from the Justice Department and provide more protection for inspectors general and whistle-blowers.The problem with passing laws is that you need both houses of Congress, and to date many Republican lawmakers have showed little to no interest in addressing these sorts of abuses. Most of them still refuse to acknowledge Mr. Biden’s victory. Perhaps once they do, the prospect of similar abuses by a Democratic president might give them the incentive they need to get on board with reforms.In the absence of any cooperation from the Senate, Mr. Biden could establish a bipartisan executive commission. Its primary task would be to tell the story of what happened and to propose remedies. It would need to have the power to compel the production of both witnesses and documents, and the mandate to produce as complete and accurate a record as possible of the violations of laws and norms by the Trump administration.It’s been four years since Americans lived under a president who placed the country’s well-being and security above his own personal interests. Simply by occupying the Oval Office, Mr. Biden can begin to repair the damage caused by his predecessor. With every act he takes, he will send an important message to the American people, and the world, about what a president should do — and, perhaps more important, what a president should not do, even if he technically has the power to do it.That’s why Mr. Biden’s victory is significant, apart from any specific reforms. “So much of whether these reforms will be successful and whether the prestige of the presidency and the dignity of the presidency will be respected is not going to depend on legal reform,” said Jack Goldsmith, a lawyer in the George W. Bush administration who co-wrote a book about reconstructing the presidency after Mr. Trump. “It’s going to depend on the identity of the person who’s the president. So not everything can be done by law. Some things need to be done by elections.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      How to Reform the Presidency After the Wreckage of Trump

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyHow to Reform the Presidency After the Wreckage of TrumpOur post-Watergate laws and practices for the presidency need revamping.Bob Bauer and Mr. Bauer served as White House counsel to President Obama and as senior adviser for the Biden campaign. Mr. Goldsmith served in the George W. Bush administration as an assistant attorney general and as special counsel to the Department of Defense. They are the authors of “After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency.”Dec. 18, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETCredit…Damon Winter/The New York TimesNow that Donald Trump’s time in the White House is ending, an urgent task is the reform of the presidency that for four years he sought to shape in his image and to run in his personal and political self-interest. What the those years have shown is that the array of laws and norms that arose after Watergate and Vietnam requires an overhaul.Any program for reform of the presidency must give precedence to our health and economic crises. It must also acknowledge political realities. Some reforms can be carried out by the executive branch, but others require legislation. Those must attract at least modest bipartisan support in the Senate.With these constraints in mind, an agenda for reform of the presidency could realistically reflect the following priorities:Executive Branch ReformsThese reforms should focus on restoring the integrity of the rule of law, especially to check presidential interventions in law enforcement for self-protection or to harm political enemies. The Constitution vests executive law enforcement power in the president, so the executive branch must institute most of these reforms. Internal branch reforms lack legal enforceability but can establish or reinforce guardrails that constrain even norm-breaking presidencies, especially by influencing presidential subordinates.Because President Trump defied them regularly, and sometimes his Justice Department did, too, there’s a lot of skepticism about norms. But actually norms succeeded more in checking him than has been appreciated — for example, in ensuring that Robert Mueller, despite Mr. Trump’s opposition, could complete his inquiry; in protecting federal prosecutors in New York in any investigation of matters related to Mr. Trump; and in preventing the Justice Department from carrying out the president’s desire to prosecute his enemies.Reforms should include sharpening Justice Department regulations against political bias in law enforcement; extending to the attorney general the department norms against interfering in investigations; clarifying the rules for investigations of presidents and presidential campaigns to protect against the political impact of investigative steps or announcements, like actions taken close to an election; and changing the regulations so that a special counsel possesses enhanced independence from the attorney general and can report to Congress and American people the facts of any credible allegations of criminal conduct against a president or senior executive branch official.Congressional ReformsCongress should by statute supplement the executive reforms. Three should have broad public support and should be easier for Republican legislators to vote for once Mr. Trump is out of office.First, Congress should transform into law the anti-corruption norms of presidential behavior that have long been accepted by both parties but were flouted by Mr. Trump. That would include requiring presidents and presidential candidates to make a timely disclosure of their tax returns. It should also bar the president, under threat of criminal penalty, from any role in the oversight of any business; ban presidential blind trusts, which in this context are inconsistent with core concepts of transparency and accountability; and establish procedures for Congress to police the “emoluments” the president would receive from foreign states.Second, Congress should expressly bar presidents from obstructing justice for self-protection, protection of family members and to interfere in elections. It should also make it a crime for a president to offer a pardon in exchange for bribes, including clemency granted for silence or corrupt action in a legal proceeding.Third, Congress must upgrade legal protections against foreign electoral interference, a concern for both the American people and the U.S. intelligence community. Congress should require campaigns to report to the F.B.I. any contacts from foreign states offering campaign support or assistance. And to clarify that foreign governments cannot offer, and presidential campaigns cannot solicit or receive, anything of value to a campaign, like opposition research, it must criminalize any mutual aid agreements between presidential campaigns and foreign governments.One sharp conflict between the executive and legislative branches needs an urgent fix and is ripe for a deal: the regulation of executive branch vacancies. Many presidential administrations — the Trump administration more aggressively than others — have circumvented the Senate confirmation process for top executive branch appointments by making unilateral temporary appointments.These tactics exploited loopholes in federal vacancies law. Compounding this problem is that the number of Senate-confirmed executive branch positions has grown (it is now around 1,200), and the Senate in recent decades has become more aggressive in using holds and filibusters to block or delay confirmation. Congress should significantly reduce the number of executive positions requiring confirmation in exchange for substantially narrowed presidential discretion to make temporary appointments.The strength of a presidency is measured by its capacity for effective executive leadership. Mr. Trump’s record of feckless leadership was closely related to his unrelenting efforts to defy or destroy constraining institutions. The reforms proposed here would enhance the institutional constraints that legitimate the president’s vast powers.They would thus serve the twin aims of ensuring that the “energy in the executive” that Alexander Hamilton defined as “a leading character in the definition of good government” is nonetheless embedded, as the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. rightly insisted, in a “system of accountability that checks the abuse of executive power.”Bob Bauer, a senior adviser for the Biden campaign and a professor of practice and distinguished scholar in residence at New York University School of Law, and Jack Goldsmith (@jacklgoldsmith), a law professor at Harvard, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a former assistant attorney general in the George W. Bush administration, are the authors of “After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Manhattan D.A. Intensifies Investigation of Trump

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The President’s TaxesOur InvestigationA 2016 WindfallProfiting From FameTimeline18 Key FindingsEditor’s NoteAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyManhattan D.A. Intensifies Investigation of TrumpProsecutors have recently interviewed employees of President Trump’s lender and insurance brokerage, in the latest indication that he still faces the potential threat of criminal charges once he leaves office.When President Trump returns to private life in January, he will lose the protection from criminal prosecution that his office has afforded him. Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesWilliam K. Rashbaum, Ben Protess and Dec. 11, 2020Updated 7:42 a.m. ETState prosecutors in Manhattan have interviewed several employees of President Trump’s bank and insurance broker in recent weeks, according to people with knowledge of the matter, significantly escalating an investigation into the president that he is powerless to stop.The interviews with people who work for the lender, Deutsche Bank, and the insurance brokerage, Aon, are the latest indication that once Mr. Trump leaves office, he still faces the potential threat of criminal charges that would be beyond the reach of federal pardons.It remains unclear whether the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., will ultimately bring charges. The prosecutors have been fighting in court for more than a year to obtain Mr. Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns, which they have called central to their investigation. The issue now rests with the Supreme Court.But lately, Mr. Vance’s office has stepped up its efforts, issuing new subpoenas and questioning witnesses, including some before a grand jury, according to the people with knowledge of the matter, who requested anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the investigation.The grand jury appears to be serving an investigative function, allowing prosecutors to authenticate documents and pursue other leads, rather than considering any charges.When Mr. Trump returns to private life in January, he will lose the protection from criminal prosecution that his office has afforded him. While The New York Times has reported that he discussed granting pre-emptive pardons to his eldest children before leaving office — and has claimed that he has the power to pardon himself — that authority applies only to federal crimes, and not to state or local investigations like the one being conducted by Mr. Vance’s office.The investigation led by the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., has spanned more than two years, and its focus has shifted over time. Credit…Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesMr. Trump, who has maintained he did nothing improper, has railed against the inquiry, calling it a politically motivated “witch hunt.”The investigation by Mr. Vance, a Democrat, has focused on Mr. Trump’s conduct as a private business owner and whether he or employees at his family business, the Trump Organization, committed financial crimes. It is the only known criminal inquiry into the president.Employees of Deutsche Bank and Aon, two corporate giants, could be important witnesses. As two of Mr. Trump’s oldest allies — and some of the only mainstream companies willing to do regular business with him — they might offer investigators a rich vein of information about the Trump Organization.There is no indication that either company is suspected of wrongdoing.Because grand jury rules require secrecy, prosecutors have disclosed little about the focus of the inquiry and nothing about what investigative steps they have taken. But earlier this year, they suggested in court papers that they were examining possible insurance, tax and bank-related fraud in the president’s corporate dealings.In recent weeks, Mr. Vance’s prosecutors questioned two Deutsche Bank employees about the bank’s procedures for making lending decisions, according to a person familiar with the interviews. The employees were experts in the bank’s underwriting process, not bankers who worked with the Trump Organization, the person said.While the focus of those interviews was not on the relationship with Mr. Trump, bank officials expect Mr. Vance’s office to summon them for additional rounds of more specific questions in the near future, the person said.Glimpses into the investigation have come in court records during the bitter and protracted legal battle over a subpoena for eight years of Mr. Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns and other financial records.A month after Mr. Vance’s office demanded the documents from the president’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, in August 2019, Mr. Trump sued to block compliance with the subpoena. The case has twisted its way through the federal courts, with the president losing at every turn, and is now in front of the Supreme Court for the second time.Danny Frost, a spokesman for Mr. Vance, declined to comment on recent moves in the investigation. Alan Garten, the Trump Organization’s general counsel, declined to comment, but recently said that the company’s practices complied with the law and called the investigation a “fishing expedition.”Aon confirmed that the company had received a subpoena for documents from the district attorney’s office but declined to comment on the interviews with prosecutors. “As is our policy, we intend to cooperate with all regulatory bodies, including providing copies of all documents requested by those bodies,” a company spokeswoman said in a statement.Deutsche Bank, Mr. Trump’s primary lender since the late 1990s, received a subpoena last year from the district attorney and has said it is cooperating with the inquiry.In court papers, the prosecutors have cited public reports of Mr. Trump’s business dealings as legal justification for their inquiry, including a Washington Post article that concluded the president may have inflated his net worth and the value of his properties to lenders and insurers.Michael D. Cohen, the president’s former lawyer and fixer who turned on him after pleading guilty to federal charges, also told Congress in February 2019 that Mr. Trump and his employees manipulated his net worth to suit his interests.Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former personal lawyer, testified before the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Feb. 27, 2019.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York Times“It was my experience that Mr. Trump inflated his total assets when it served his purposes, such as trying to be listed among the wealthiest people in Forbes, and deflated his assets to reduce his real estate taxes,” he said in testimony before the House Oversight Committee.Mr. Trump’s supporters have noted that Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to lying to Congress and accused him of lying again to earn a reduced prison sentence.The Trump Organization’s lawyers are also likely to argue to prosecutors that Mr. Trump could not have duped Deutsche Bank because the bank did its own analysis of Mr. Trump’s net worth.Over the years, employees and executives inside the bank thought that Mr. Trump was overvaluing some of his assets by as much as 70 percent, according to current and former bank officials. Deutsche Bank still decided to lend Mr. Trump’s company hundreds of millions of dollars over the past decade, concluding that he was a safe lending risk in part because he had more than enough money and other assets to personally guarantee the debt.The prosecutors’ interviews with the employees was not the only recent activity in the investigation. Last month, The Times reported that Mr. Vance’s office had subpoenaed the Trump Organization for records related to tax write-offs on millions of dollars in consulting fees, some of which appear to have gone to the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump.According to people with knowledge of the matter, the subpoena sought information about fees paid to TTT Consulting L.L.C., an apparent reference to Ms. Trump and other members of her family. Ms. Trump was an executive officer of the Trump companies that made the payments, meaning she appears to have been paid as a consultant while also working for the Trump Organization.Mr. Garten, the Trump Organization’s general counsel, argued in a statement at the time that the subpoena was part of an “ongoing attempt to harass the company.” He added that “everything was done in strict compliance with applicable law and under the advice of counsel and tax experts.”Mr. Vance’s investigation has spanned more than two years and shifted focus over time. When the investigation began, it examined the Trump Organization’s role in hush money payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign to two women who claimed to have had affairs with Mr. Trump. Prosecutors were examining how the company recorded a reimbursement to Mr. Cohen for one of the payments. Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to federal campaign finance violations for his role in the scheme.A state grand jury convened by Mr. Vance’s office heard testimony from at least one witness about that issue last year, according to a person with knowledge of that testimony, but the payments have receded as a central focus of the inquiry.Michael Rothfeld contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More