CNN legal analyst says Trump Organization tax fraud investigation at 'dead end'

There will be no criminal charges brought at this time against a top executive of the Trump organization, Matthew Calamari, as part of New York’s ongoing investigation into former President Trump’s companies. 

CNN is reporting that according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, Calamari “is under investigation as part of this off-the-books compensation scheme. The question whether he paid the appropriate taxes on corporate apartments, company cars.”

But the fact that there are no plans to charge him at this time indicates, according to CNN, that the DA’s office is not trying to get him to flip on Trump or the Trump Organization, as they were when they charged the Trump Organization and longtime chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, Allen Weisselberg, back in July in a 15-count indictment over an alleged 15-year scheme to avoid paying taxes on $1.7 million in benefits that he received as part of his compensation. Weisselberg and the Trump Organization have pleaded not guilty on all charges.

Instead of the tax fraud investigation based on benefits compensation, which CNN legal analyst Elie Honig now refers to as “largely a dud” of a case in light of the Calamari development, the D.A.’s office is back to its original focus, investigating whether Trump used evaluations of his properties to get favorable treatment from the banks by inflating the values, and at the same time favorable treatment from the tax authorities by deflating the values, according to the outlet. 

“It looks to me like the tax fraud part of the investigation,” said Honig, “is at a dead end.”