s office for criminal prosecution and sort of seconded two of its prosecutors from the attorney general's office to go over to the d.a.'s office to collaborate with them. and work on that criminal case. so all of these things are questions of serious potential liability for the former president. and then there's the question of what's happening at the federal level. the prospect of federal criminal charges against former president trump. and every time we report on this, i feel a little tickle right here behind my ear, which tells me that attorney general merrick garland has just eaten another fistful of mint flavored tums. i get a little notification here that that happened. it is absolutely palpable that they want nothing to do with the potentially criminal trailing ends of the last presidency. they just don't seem like it. but they can only pretend so hard and for so long that that isn't something that has been left for them to deal with. i mean, this is all happening at once. here tonight is this news of state prosecutors of new york, convening a special grand jury to work intensively

prosecutor in the d.a.'s office or the attorney general's office, and you see one example of an expense being mislabeled fraudulentlyied, you are then going to look for others. in my experience it's relatively likely that there are others. i'm not saying there are here, but i know for sure they would be looking for others in this case. >> you're saying you see a transaction like stormy daniels and you say, it feels very unlikely that a business like this that has been operating as long as it has is thinking up this particular scheme for the very first time. >> we used to say, you know, we're just not that good. we caught you at the only thing you ever did. it's just not that good. >> do you have a sense of a timetable here of when we would expect something to emerge by way of criminal charges or some indication that an investigation has been closed down? >> stressing that it's educated speculation, like all this is, we're reading tea leaves, i think there is every chance that cy vance is going to want to make this decision before he leaves office. he's not running for reelection. his term is up at the end of this ye

two prosecutors from the attorney general's office are reportedly moving over to that d.a.'s office instead to help them with that criminal prosecution of whatever it is the ag found. "the washington post" for their part added that the trump organization was given a heads up about this "criminal" term in a written notice late last month, which makes it all the more interesting that the former president himself, former president himself, put out a long, rather unhinged statement reacting with outrage to this news about the criminal investigation. apparently his business was told about it a while ago. according to the "post," the notice suggested that, quote, criminality could apply to action by current and former company executives and employees. of course news of an escalating criminal probe of the former president is a dramatic thing, right? we've never had a former president under criminal investigation before, ever, let alone a former president under criminal investigation simultaneously in multiple jurisdictions, all for different things. it's wild. but it is also, i thin

pressure is now mounting for him from both the attorneys general s' office and the district attorney. what will it mean for trump if prosecutors are successful in getting him to cooperate with authorities? >> well, don, if they succeed in getting alan weisselberg to flip, that will be enormous. he has been there forever, as you said. he is the cfo. he knows all the finances inside and out. knows where all the bodies are bettered. it would be huge. honestly, i'm not optimistic. they've been going after weisselberg for years now. the southern district, when they were investigating the stormy daniels payments where they ultimately convicted rookie, they had weisselberg to talk about that. i'm not sure they'll get there, but we'll see. >> when the new york attorney general's office grilled eric trump in october, the investigation was civil, and it has been under way since 2019. now it has become criminal. that was the breaking news last night. what could have pushed for this change? what happened? >> well, you know, these investigations often start on the civil side at the attorney general's office. they have both criminal and civ

investigation into trump's businesses and that the attorney general is also conducting her probe in conjunction with the manhattan d.a.'s office. recently, prosecutorsir hands on millions of pages of trump documents after a lengthy battle to subpoena his financial records which went all the way to the supreme court. to be clear, the former president has not been charge would a crime, and nbc has not been confirmed the reports that a special grand jury has been seated although the move would logically be the next step for prosecutors. where does this story go next, and whether an indictment is handed down is going to have an enormous impact on our politics because donald trump isn't just any former president. he's still the de facto leader of the republican party. republicans had a chance to make a clean break from trump after he lost the election, and instead, they embraced his lies about our democracy. they ousted liz cheney from leadership because of those lies and they're blocking investigation into the siege on the capitol the lies incited, and now they face the fact their leader might be indicted in the coming months. with me now is nbc news wh

s announcement means for trump work. danya perry is both a former federal prosecutor for the southern district of new york and it former new york state deputy attorney general who worked out of the very officehat released a statement yesterday. david fahrenheit, of course, is the washington post reporter coming from the trump family and his business interest. he was awarded the pulitzer prize for his coverage of donald trump's false charity creams that ultimately led to trump agreeing to shut down his foundation. all right, diet let's start with you as someone who worked in the office. i tend to think of attorney generals offices, or i guess attorney generals offices as largely civil investigations. so what was your reaction when you saw that? what is your understanding of the meaning and implications thereof? >> i think it's a real bombshell. as you said, the sweet spot for the attorney generals office really is a complex -- on the civil side. so this matters, you know, it has been humming along for well over a year and seeing that they were perfectly content to meet with witnesses, review documents, and that is chugging along in parallel with a criminal investigation just a few blocks ove