Exclusive Excerpt from TAKING DOWN TRUMP

Excerpt from Taking Down Trump: 12 Rules for Prosecuting Donald Trump by Someone Who Did It Successfully

At first, I wondered if I’d made a terrible mistake.

My first day at the New York Attorney General’s office was not going how I’d envisioned it. The callback interviews had been on the 24th and 25th floors of 120 Broadway, with panoramic views of lower Manhattan, glimpses of the rivers and bridges in between the other buildings. It felt like I’d be starring in the real-life version of Billions or Suits, and in fact 120 Broadway was later featured on Succession.

photo: Creative Commons

My office was a different story. The Consumer Frauds Bureau was down on the 3rd floor, in the shadows of the skyscrapers, with stained gray carpet, yellowing ceiling tiles, flickering fluorescents, 10-year-old computers, 30-year-old beige push-button phones, and derelict stacks, boxes, and binders of paper, some decades old. I was given an empty office at the end of a hallway no one ever walked down. Every day, starting just before lunch, the smell of fried onions permeated everything, as my office sat directly above the kitchen of a Capital Grille steakhouse far too expensive for any of the government lawyers to afford. This didn’t feel like the story of a crusading lawyer on TV. It felt like the DMV.

Then on my second day, my bureau chief, Jane Azia, suddenly appeared in my doorway with a new project for me.

It was about an unlicensed for-profit school called Trump University.

The case was stuck, Jane told me. Trump’s lawyers had stonewalled us, giving us only a paltry fraction of the materials we had subpoenaed earlier that year at the beginning of the investigation, in February 2011. It was now October, and it was unclear if there was a case at all. So it was a perfect assignment for the new guy. My task was to call up a number of the New York–based students of Trump University and ask them about their experiences.

I never expected what happened next.

Some of the former students started to cry when I told them who I was and what I was calling about. Some of them ranted, the words pouring out in a stream for an hour or longer. Some of them refused to answer my questions at first and instead turned the tables and started questioning me: Are you really from the attorney general’s office? How do I know you don’t work for Trump?

Once they were satisfied, I was on their side, they started telling me the truth about Trump University. All I had to ask was the open-ended question: “Could you tell me about your experiences?”

It was a rip-off. A scam. A fraud. We were conned. The whole thing was a bait and switch. I had just started working on the case, and the court documents were practically writing themselves.

Yet underneath all the anger was a deep sense of pain and betrayal. They were believers. They believed in Donald Trump as a winner, as a paragon of the American Dream, and they believed in Trump University’s sales pitch, that it would teach them Trump’s secrets for achieving that dream, for making millions as real estate investors. They trusted him. And he took their money, as much as $35,000 per person and sometimes more, and left them with nothing to show for it but fake diplomas and photos of themselves standing next to a cardboard cutout of Trump.

photo: Robert Guillo

And the ones who cried? They cried because they were mortified. I feel like such a fool. I can’t believe I fell for that. But they also cried because they didn’t believe that anyone would ever look into it, that they would ever have a chance of getting their money back, that there would ever be any consequences for the scammers. They didn’t believe that someone like me would ever call them, and even once I did, they still didn’t believe that someone like Trump would ever be brought to justice.

Yet without prompting, dozens of them volunteered to be interviewed further, to testify, to help however they could. I’m afraid of him, one told me, but someone has to do something about this. But they were still deeply skeptical that anything would actually happen. Do you promise you’ll look into this? Do you promise you’re actually going to do something about it?

MOST OF THE TIME, no one does anything about a malefactor like Donald Trump.

This was especially true with Trump prior to the Trump University case. He was first the target of a government enforcement action in 1973, for blatant and systematic racial discrimination to keep Black tenants from getting units in Trump apartment buildings; he got off with a slap on the wrist, as we’ll see. He managed to get an entire generation of otherwise high-powered New York City prosecutors tucked away in his pocket, softened up with donations, co-opted with the promise of future donations, bullied into passivity. Only starting in the 2010s, with the Trump University case and the New York AG’s subsequent case against the Trump Foundation, did prosecutors and litigators finally start cracking the code for taking down Trump.

This book, for the first time, shares the blueprint for how to make that happen.

YOU’RE ABOUT TO learn all the key lessons on how to bring the powerful to justice—specifically about how to bring Donald Trump to justice, something that many people still believe cannot be done.

But I know it can be done, because I did it.

As part of an amazing team of lawyers with the New York AG, I helped lead the investigation into Trump University, building the civil prosecution that we filed against Trump in August 2013, which ultimately resulted in a $25 million settlement that was announced in 2016 and finalized in 2017–18, the first major loss he had ever suffered in a court case.

Yet perhaps the most amazing thing about the Trump University case is that it almost didn’t happen at all.

Trump refused to produce the documents he was obligated to produce; other evidence was out there, but it was difficult and labor-intensive to unearth. Many prosecutors and litigators would have stopped short or would never have devoted the resources in the first place. But it’s not just about the quantum of evidence—it’s also about having the will and the commitment to bring a case against a powerful target like Trump. And as we’ll see, that will and commitment wavered and almost collapsed, numerous times, when it came to the deeply flawed person who held the office of New York Attorney General at the time, Eric Schneiderman. And all the evidence in the world cannot make a case if the senior-most prosecutors in an office simply refuse to bring it.

Therein lies the problem: prosecutors are humans, with all the imperfections that brings. Worse, prosecutors are often politicians, which only exacerbates the problem. Donald Trump is supremely untalented or a complete fake and phony at many, many things, but one of his actual strengths is knowing how to work someone, especially someone weak and insecure and easily swayed by flattery or money or the promise of it—in other words, he’s really good at manipulating people like himself.

This is, therefore, a playbook for the real world we inhabit, a world of flawed public officials who can be drawn to the dark side, or who can be coaxed into using their prosecutorial powers for good. After all, for all of Eric Schneiderman’s flaws, he ultimately did greenlight the Trump University case. And whether you’re an activist or advocate, a career prosecutor, or a concerned and engaged citizen, we all need to know how to work the system and the people who hold the levers of power, so we can work it as well, and ultimately better than, someone like Trump.

THIS IS ALSO a playbook of the legal tactics that it takes to defeat someone like Trump. How do you get the evidence you need to win? How do you convince people to cooperate with you? How do you overcome all the stonewalling, all the bullying, all the counterattacks, all the diversions, all the endless delays, and all of the personal attacks that will inevitably come from any legal case against Trump?

The lessons assembled here are more specific to a case against Trump or a Trump-like figure of power, resources, and a shameless lack of scruples (more on that in a bit). The list is not meant to be comprehensive, and really, any attempt to be comprehensive would be sure to fail. But I endeavored to collect the most obvious rules that followed directly from my own experiences as well as others who’ve tangled with Trump—especially those who have now joined the still-exclusive club of lawyers who have defeated him.

Then there are other lessons and rules that are even more blazingly obvious but are more generally applicable to any case, not just against Trump; but they’re worth mentioning here at the outset.

First, you have to start with a clean slate. No preconceived notions. No picking an outcome and then trying to find evidence to fit that outcome. Prosecutors talk about going where the facts and the law lead them, and though that’s a platitude, it’s a platitude for a reason. Any valid case must be grounded firmly in evidence that an illegality has occurred (notice I did not say “crime,” as we’re discussing both civil as well as criminal offenses; the civil offenses include the fraud claims New York has brought against Trump University, the Trump Foundation, and the Trump Organization, plus pursuing Trump University for its failures to have the requisite licenses and approvals to operate a school and to call it a “University”). At the beginning of a case, that quantum of evidence has not yet been obtained.

Of course, the genesis of a case usually comes from some kind of complaint or suspicion — complaints from victims, whistleblower reports, referrals from other government agencies, or investigative journalism. But that’s just the spark. If there’s no fuel, then there’s no fire, and the spark will die out.

40 Wall Street, the Trump building where Trump University was based; photo: Creative Commons

At the beginning of the Trump University case, when I joined the AG’s office in October 2011, we had a referral from the New York State Education Department regarding the lack of licensure, and we had a handful of complaints from victims. This was enough for us to open an investigation, but it was not enough for us to escalate it, or to bring a case. When I was handed the matter, I was told — correctly and properly — that we weren’t sure yet if there was a case. No one started with a preconceived mission to “take down Trump.” We started with initial signs of potential misconduct, and we began to investigate. Back in 2011, we still had a blank slate. We needed to fill it in or drop the matter and move on.

Second, then, is to dig and dig and dig, and then dig some more. This may be the most obvious rule of any investigation, but it’s worth mentioning precisely because it’s so fundamental. Every piece of potential evidence must be pursued and followed up on. Every document must be reviewed. Every potential witness must be contacted.

When I started contacting some of the Trump University victims, the investigation quickly turned into a task I simply had to complete. I’d been asked to talk to “a few dozen” victims. Once I heard their heartbreaking accounts, I determined I should talk to a few more people, just to make sure I was getting a well-rounded account. So, I decided I would set a goal of 50 witnesses.

Then I kept on hearing these horror stories. The man who’d been forced to sell his house because of the credit card debt he incurred on the useless “Trump Gold Elite” mentorship program. The woman with a child with special medical needs who had wavered about signing up, but ultimately did when she was promised that her instructor would personally take her on as a mentee— and then the instructor ghosted her. The teachers and accountants who just wanted a chance to live out their long-deferred dreams of being successful entrepreneurs—but who came away with their life savings wiped out, or more debt, and absolutely nothing to show for it but lies and broken promises.

I couldn’t stop. I needed to hear from more of them.

And more and more of them called me back even when I left voicemails. So the 50 had turned into 63. And even though it had been weeks of work, I had a feeling that this case was far, far bigger and more grave than anyone had realized, that it merited this kind of extraordinary investment of time. I had also been asked to come up with a sort of scoring system: what percentage of the students were satisfied, dissatisfied, or neutral? I conveniently rationalized that it would be annoying for everyone to be doing mental math to divide by 63, so I decided I would see if I could get to 100 interviews. Then I wrote an executive summary of my findings—including that 87 of the 100 students were dissatisfied, most of them extremely so, and that, unprompted, they reported a staggering array of gross misrepresentations and deceptions.

They were told to call their credit card companies to get credit limit increases, supposedly as an exercise to boost their assertiveness in dealmaking—but really it was to make sure that the students would have more credit with which to purchase the more expensive “Elite” programs (which ran from $10,000 to $35,000 or more). They were told that Donald Trump had “handpicked” the instructors, when in fact he had never met them and did not know them at all. They were told that they would learn Donald Trump’s special, proprietary techniques for investing in real estate, when in fact the “curriculum” was created by a company that made materials for wealth-creation seminars and time-share sales companies. They were told that they would get special access to “hard money lenders” who could finance their real estate deals, but there was no special access, and the list they were given came from a magazine. They were told that Trump donated all the proceeds from Trump University to charity. They were told (at the free preview session) that Donald Trump might stop by to speak (at the paid session), but of course he never did—all they could do was take photos next to a life-sized cardboard cutout of Trump.

Dig, and dig, and dig. And then dig some more.

The corollary to the imperative to dig is equally obvious and even more famous. Follow the money. This was popularized in the wake of Watergate, specifically in the film version of All the President’s Men, based on Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward’s book about the scandal and their landmark reporting on it for the Washington Post.

The Trump University case followed the money, and so does virtually any case worth its salt. It often turns up plenty of interesting evidence—in our case, clear proof that Donald Trump profited personally and handsomely from Trump University, or in the later case against the Trump Foundation, clear proof that the Trumps had been using the foundation as a slush fund for political and personal payments. But ultimately, “follow the money” is a good rule for every case, not just in a case against a powerful foe.

A more interesting but still fairly general rule, though? Follow the lies. This is especially true in any fraud case. You want to match the statements that were made by the target—and the actual truths juxtaposed with those statements. If the statements accord with the truth, or the statements are mild exaggerations, then there’s no misrepresentation, no deception, no fraud. But a significant discrepancy between the statement and the truth? That becomes actionable, either as civil fraud or as criminal fraud.

Following all of Trump’s lies can be a Herculean task, but it’s a necessary task for bringing any kind of case against him for fraud or deceptive business practices. The boastful or manipulative statements from Trump are easy enough to find; then the job is to mine the truth underneath each statement—and to back that up with hard evidence. We managed to do this in the Trump University case, as we’ll see—and the AG’s office has managed to do it again in their massive civil fraud case against Trump for his fraudulent financial statements drastically overstating the value of his properties—but the deeper lesson in investigating Trump was how to find the evidence to corroborate your case, given that Trump refuses to comply with subpoenas and other requests for documents. “Follow the lies” is a good rule for any fraud case, but we’ll focus on the special case of how to find the evidence for those lies when Trump refuses to hand it over.

Another key consideration is all of the fantastic legal work that has been done not only by the prosecutors who’ve been investigating Trump but also the private litigators who’ve now begun defeating him in civil litigation—including in the Trump University matter, where the private class action counsel did heroic work in parallel with our case, as well as in the victories won by E. Jean Carroll and Michael Cohen in 2023. There are also all of the Trump bankruptcies, of course, in which creditors had a mixture of wins and losses in their efforts to recover assets from Trump’s various failed businesses, including, most infamously, his casinos in Atlantic City (fascinating stories of their own, though beyond the scope of this book).

After decades of evading or defeating any attempts to hold him accountable in court, litigants have finally found their way through all the shields and defenses of the Death Star—and while a dramatic explosion still has yet to happen, the key is that Trump is finally losing. And we can learn from those cases—as well as the cases where opponents tried and failed to bring him down or didn’t really bother trying at all.

YET THIS PLAYBOOK is about more than just Trump. The lessons here are relevant to any case against a powerful malefactor who seems to elude justice.

There is, sadly, no shortage of such people in the world — especially now. We live in an era blanketed by the long shadows of fraud, corruption, and fascism, an era in which the powerful and privileged can seemingly get away with the gravest of crimes, the vilest of lies, without ever facing any serious consequences. An era in which many of the biggest fortunes have been made on hype — the era of Theranos and FTX — where business and political empires are being built not on hustle but on hucksterism. On grift. On lies. And when those lies are called out, or even when suits are filed or crimes are charged, there is no shame. No remorse. Not a single pang of guilt or the tiniest voice of conscience. Instead these oligarchs and their minions take the brazen approach that the law and the rules simply do not apply to them — and often, they are able to elude justice precisely because their own fans continue to be conned and continue to provide the financial support that allows the con man to pay his lawyers and stay out of prison. This kind of blatant, aggressive shamelessness used to be limited to Mafia bosses like John Gotti and other criminals from the world of organized crime, but now it seems to have infected even the most august corridors of American society.

Trump still stands out as the most obvious example, but the moves he uses to avoid accountability are the same moves now used by dozens of imitators. The counterattacks and personal attacks on opponents, lawyers, prosecutors, and even judges and their clerks. The use of both legacy media and social media to whip up public opinion. The stonewalling and brash refusals to engage in the normal legal processes of investigation and discovery. The self-pitying victimization and disgusting martyrdom as a way to keep the donations flowing. None of it is unique to Trump anymore (and in fact it never was). So, the playbook to defeat Trump is a playbook to defeat any powerful grifter or predator.

And increasingly, that grift and predation has been yoked to a cancerous extremist agenda to destroy our Republic and the Constitution—an agenda that benefits greatly from the deep pessimism more and more people feel toward our legal system and whether it is capable of delivering justice. There is an angry, dismissive cynicism toward prosecutors like Robert Mueller, Merrick Garland, and Alvin Bragg. This collapse of trust is corrosive, undermining our prosecutors, our courts, and the rule of law, further emboldening the grifters to pull off even bigger and more brazen cons. This book shows how our systems actually can work as intended to bring even the richest and most powerful to justice, and why those systems are worth preserving and improving.

We need to restore our faith in the justice system—and in ourselves—that we can fight back and survive these mortal threats to America. The entire modus operandi of the far-right grifters is to rage against the liberal elites who supposedly control society, don the mantle of the plain, virtuous People, and then claim that only they have the cure to what ails the People—if the People will simply provide their credit card numbers. We need to understand how these grifters can be defeated, or they will destroy everything as they seize power and line their own pockets.

We need a reason to hope again. After many failed attempts to hold Trump accountable, we need to learn from those failures—and, critically, from the successes that have started to happen. So above all, let this be a road map for how America can begin to escape the wilderness of grift and fascism.