Preet Bharara on the Lawsuits Trump Could Face

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Well, now to your former position as U.S. attorney. As you know, there is an array of criminal and civil cases against him happening right now, whether it’s the district attorney Cy Vance, reports of allegations on insurance and bank fraud, the attorney general Letitia James, civil investigations, again, into alleged fraud, value of properties. On personal level, there are two active defamation suits against the president by women who accuse him of sexual misconduct. And his own niece is suing him and his siblings, two of them, for — quote — “cheating her out of her inheritance.”

PREET BHARARA, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY, SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK: Yes.

AMANPOUR: Knowing what you know, how many of these stand any chance? Do you think that there is — what do you think when you look ahead?

BHARARA: Yes, it’s hard to say. I’m not in the business of handicapping other people’s cases. People would do that with my cases, not knowing what the evidence was, not seeing what the grand jury testimony was. Some of them seem quite strong. It’s harder to understand and know what’s going on with respect to the criminal cases. So, some of the cases are civil. That would result, even in the worst-case scenario for the president, in a financial penalty. And some of them might carry a prison sentence. And so we know that Cy Vance, the district attorney in Manhattan, is looking at things of a criminal nature. And that, I think, is what the president fears the most. And that is what he will no longer have protection from in any way once he leaves office. I don’t know all the material that Cy Vance has. But we do know there’s been a pattern and practice on the part of Trump and his foundation and other businesses of engaging in unseemly financial practices. There’s, I think, a real question about his taxes. There’s a real question about how he’s valued his assets in trying to get loans for banks, a real question about how he might devalue assets and income in order to get a tax break. Those are things that we know sort of informally from various — from various modes of reporting that he’s been engaged in. And I think Cy Vance has a serious investigation. And the president should be worried about that. There’s also still the matter of Michael Cohen, his former lawyer, who pled guilty in the Southern District of New York, my old office, in which he said in the guilty plea that he committed a particular crime related to campaign finance violation, at the direction of and in coordination with Individual 1, who’s Donald Trump. So, there’s some jeopardy there as well.