How money buys immunization from prosecution

The influence of money in politics lies largely in the fact that if you are a big donor to politicians, you can get immediate access to them. Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. is perhaps the best example of this process in action. It turns out that the Manhattan district attorney’s office is currently considering bringing criminal charges against the Trump organization in the wake of the information released in the recent convictions and plea deals of close associates of Donald Trump.



Both officials stressed that the office’s review of the matter is in its earliest stages and prosecutors have not yet made a decision on whether to proceed.

But there is a big catch and that is that the boss of the prosecutors is Vance and he has a notorious history, being a poster child for how money works in politics. This ProPublica report from last year revealed what happened when the career prosecutors in his office felt they had enough evidence in 2012 to charge Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr. with felonies.








Yeah, right. If this was an isolated case, Vance’s claim of having “made the right call” might be believed. But this is part of a pattern by Vance of favoring the wealthy and his big contributors. He also did not pursue earlier abuse charges against Harvey Weinstein. He also did not pursue charges against the big Wall Street banks in his district following the housing crash but instead threw the full weight of his office against a small bank named Abacus owned by Chinese Americans. That fascinating story is told in an excellent documentary that I reviewed here.

Vance is a symbol of everything that is wrong with money in US politics. Will he agree to another ‘visit’ with Kasowitz to ‘discuss’ the latest Trump case before he makes another ‘right call’? After the recent explosive allegations against Weinstein, Vance finally moved to charge him. The same pressure should be brought to bear on him now. The only way that Vance will move on this is if the spotlight is relentlessly focused on him, like what ProPublica is doing.


  1. jrkrideau says

    The finest justice money can buy.

    As Tabby Lavalamp keeps saying, the idea of elected law officers (from district attorney to sheriff, heck, to dog catcher) is mad.

  2. Art says

    The US has a legal system. In an ideal world we would have a justice system.

    Will Rogers used to have routine where he would comment about reading in the papers that most politicians were lawyers and note that having lawyers designing laws was kind of like having doctors designing diseases. He had/has a point. To make things worse all of the judges are also trained as lawyers. This wasn’t always true.

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