THE TIGHTENING NOOSES:

 After the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago last week, I called my colleague Jennifer Taub--author, law professor, and expert on financial crimes. She is the author of Big Dirty Money: The Shocking Injustice and Unseen Cost of White Collar Crime and Other People's Houses: How Decades of Bailouts, Captive Regulators, and Toxic Bankers Made Home Mortgages a Thrilling Business. She is also a contributing writer at the Washington Monthly. We caught up on the investigation over the phone and in subsequent emails, ending on August 18.

This conversation has been edited and shortened for clarity. [...]

MC: Let me ask you about fake electoral slates. They seem to be a relatively straightforward case of fraud.

JT: Fraud is not the correct charge. It's called conspiracy to defraud the United States, which isn't the usual kind of fraud. It would be the argument that [Trump] conspired with [his lawyer] John Eastman and maybe others to interfere with the joint session of Congress counting the electoral votes. That's one charge, and the second would be obstruction of a congressional proceeding. When Judge [David] Carter ordered Eastman's materials to go to the January 6 Committee, he did so because he said that he believed it's more likely than not that Trump and Eastman were engaged in crimes. So those are those two charges. And yes, I do think that is a fruitful path. But I also think the seditious conspiracy is one, and they shouldn't back down from that.

MC: What Trump actions could trigger a seditious conspiracy indictment?

JT: The statute says "to put down or destroy by force, the government of the United States...or to oppose by force the authority thereof...to prevent, hinder or delay the execution of any law, of the United States." So, the idea is that you're using force to do that. So, the first avenue with the fake electors is part of an effort to conspire and obstruct in a nonviolent way, but the seditious conspiracy is trying to accomplish the same goal through force.

MC: Gotcha.

JT: These two streams of the investigation are parallel. Eastman and others were doing the fake electoral votes, and then people like Roger Stone did the others.

MC: Your area of expertise is financial crimes. So, the former president took the Fifth a gazillion times with New York Attorney General Tish James. Tell me what you think of the case the state of New York is putting together.

JT: I've always thought the case is strong, as is the overlapping case that the New York district attorney, Alvin Bragg, is investigating. It's hard to know all the stuff she's investigating, but my understanding is that she's looking at state tax fraud at the civil level and at falsifying business records. Because of the civil case, the burden of proof is much lower. Because the business is incorporated in New York, one of the remedies is to dissolve that corporation.

MC: So Trump misrepresented the value of his assets?

JT: They treated assets as if they were extremely valuable when the value would benefit him and treated them as not as valuable when it wouldn't. You want the property to look less valuable when you pay tax. If you're getting a bank loan, you would like the collateral to seem more valuable. He was engaged in kindergarten cooking of the books, right? This is not Enron.

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