A boast that ex-President Donald Trump made in his first 2016 presidential debate with Hillary Clinton “may well come back to haunt him” after criminal charges were filed against The Trump Organization and CFO Allen Weisselberg, said former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance.
Vance, on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Friday, pointed to the debate moment when Clinton accused Trump of hiding his tax returns so voters wouldn’t know how little taxes he was paying and Trump responded that it “makes me smart.”
Watch the video here:
Vance acknowledged she didn’t know if the investigation into Trump’s family business and Weisselberg “will ultimately reach” the ex-president himself. The indictment alleges a tax-dodging compensation scheme “in a manner that was ‘off the books.’”
“Right now, it’s limited to the corporation that’s his namesake corporation and to the CFO,” explained Vance, now a legal analyst for MSNBC. “But those comments in that debate may well come back to haunt him.”
Vance also spotlighted Trump’s reaction to the charges, which he called a “terrible thing for our country.”
“He didn’t say, ‘This is untrue, we’re going to fight this,’” noted Vance. “He didn’t say, like you would think a business owner might, ‘This is outrageous, I can’t believe this was going on in my company.’ Instead, he returns to ‘witch hunt.’”