It's up to you, New York, New York

My "little town blues" are dragging out.

[New York Attorney General Letitia James'] lawsuit—which accuses the Trumps of faking business records to dupe banks and dodge taxes—wants to kill the Trump Organization and seize what could be up to $1 billion of its assets. Her 222-page lawsuit details rampant criminal fraud, but her authority as New York State’s top prosecutor only allows her to seek a civil remedy.

People vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account, written by former special assistant DA Mark Pomerantz, lays out how the AG’s office barrelled forward when the Manhattan DA hit the brakes.

[...]

[I]t describes how Pomerantz’s team of local county prosecutors collected evidence that Trump routinely lied to banks, insurers, and property appraisers to inflate the value of his properties. The team thought that the bank fraud angle was the strongest criminal case against Trump himself, but the incoming DA who inherited the investigation, Alvin Bragg Jr., halted the probe when he wasn’t guaranteed a victory. The team’s top two prosecutors, Pomerantz and Carey Dunne, quit in protest.

[...]

For years, prosecutors also explored a second case that Trump broke state laws when he falsified official business records to cover up the hush money payments to keep the porn star Stormy Daniels quiet about their brief affair, a scandal that led the feds to take down his consigliere Michael Cohen. However, four sources said the DA’s office was constrained by jurisdiction issues. Trump ran for federal office and is believed to have broken federal election finance laws by using his company to launder the payment. Proving that state laws were broken too was a heightened challenge for investigators. In New York, the underlying crime is a misdemeanor, so the falsification of business records would be limited to a misdemeanor as well—and prosecutors were reluctant to file such a weak case on its own.

These sources said a third case, that the Trump Organization faked business records to enrich executives and dodge taxes, was the simplest to prove.

[...]

But what made the case so easy—the documents—only implicated the company’s chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, and his deputy, Jeffrey S. McConney. Trump’s signature was on a memo approving a screwy benefits scheme, but it wasn’t enough.

[...]

Weisselberg is now behind bars at the notorious Rikers Island jail, and the Trump companies were ordered to pay $1.6 million.

  The Daily Beast

McConney was given immunity for his testimony. Weisselberg could have had the same, but he wouldn't flip on Trump. I've been saying he never will, even though they're going after him again, but I wasn't aware that he's doing time in Rikers. He may really want out of there, as opposed to possibly getting more time there.

[A]s one former prosecutor who recently left Bragg’s office pointed out, criminal cases require convincing juries “beyond a shadow of a doubt,” while civil cases, like the one taken on by the AG, only require what’s called “the preponderance of the evidence” to tilt the scales, which is equivalent to 51 percent certainty.

Another interesting difference is that in a civil case, the jury is permitted to consider that a defendant's decision to take the 5th may indicate guilt. And Trump's deposition is full of taking the 5th - 400 times by some counts. 

In the meantime, we're still waiting for Fani Willis in Georgia to make that "imminent" announcement about whether she's filing charges against Trump for 2020 election interference.

.....but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 02/11/2023:

UPDATE 02/16/2023: