It was 1972 and Donald Trump and his father Fred Trump were under investigation for discriminating against black tenants in their New York apartments.
The Justice Department sued the Trumps, who fought bitterly for two years until they reached a perfect settlement.
The only concession prosecutors made was for the Trumps to place ads in newspapers that blacks were welcome in their territory.
It was Trump’s closest personal contact with the law until Tuesday, when he is expected to turn himself in to a judge on business fraud charges related to paying former porn star Stormy Daniels a silence money.
This will be a historic day as he will be the first US president in history to be charged with a crime.
For Mr. Trump and his supporters, preventing him from being elected to a second term in the White House represents the culmination of politically motivated work.
But for others, it represents a moment long overdue: Donald Trump is finally held to account.
For decades, Trump has lived with impunity despite a series of investigations into him and his companies.
His ability to avoid the consequences of his actions gradually became part of his brand, for example, he boasted during the 2016 presidential debate with Hillary Clinton that he was “smart” if he paid little or no taxes.
The thought that this is coming to an end may explain why the Trump family is angry and “excited.” New York Times Reporter Maggie Haberman, who covered the Trumps more than any other reporter.
The cases against Trump and his real estate company The Trump Organization show how special it is that he is being prosecuted for the first time.
The housing discrimination case gave Mr. Trump a textbook for dealing with the law: ignore or delay and attack when cornered.
In 1979, during the construction of Trump Tower, he hired non-union Polish immigrants who paid as little as $4 an hour, worked seven days a week, and slept on site.
Trump escaped prosecution in the early 1980s when prosecutors investigated whether he had given away three apartments in Trump Tower to Mafia sympathizers.
In the 1990s, New Jersey regulators audited Mr. Trump’s casinos and determined that they could not be considered “financially sound.” However, he continued to exploit her.
Prosecutors followed suit for years, eventually fining Mr. Trump $10 million in 2015 for failing to conduct a money laundering check at the Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, New. -Jersey.
Trump refused to give up his business interests when he became president in 2017, instead handing over control to his son Eric.
In 2018, the court approved a $25 million settlement for 5,000 Trump University victims and promised to teach them how to get rich in real estate. Mr. Trump has been held personally accountable.
There were then two impeachments during his presidency, the first of which was for inciting foreign interference in US elections. The second took place during the January 6, 2021 Capitol riots, but he survived both cases after trial in the Senate, not in criminal court.
Mr. Trump survived the Mueller investigation into his dealings with Russia because Special Counsel Robert Mueller recommended no charges be filed because he was the sitting president.
Then, last December, The Trump Organization was found guilty on all counts of tax fraud that landed its chief financial officer in jail for five months, a sentence he is currently serving.
No charges were brought against Trump personally, although his name was mentioned throughout the trial.
The race for the presidency and his victory have led to an unprecedented scrutiny of Trump’s deals and thrown the gauntlet to prosecutors under attack from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office overseeing the silence case.
But this is far from Mr. Trump’s only judicial exposure.
Later that month, he faces a libel suit in New York from a journalist who claims he raped her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s.
Mr. Trump is under investigation in Georgia for allegedly interfering in the 2020 election, and a special counsel is looking into allegations of illegally hiding classified documents after he left office.
If the former president manages to evade all this, it will be his greatest salvation.
Source: I News
I am Michael Melvin, an experienced news writer with a passion for uncovering stories and bringing them to the public. I have been working in the news industry for over five years now, and my work has been published on multiple websites. As an author at 24 News Reporters, I cover world section of current events stories that are both informative and captivating to read.