Eliza Orlins, a “Warren Democrat” public defender who is running for Manhattan District Attorney, said Thursday that incumbent Manhattan DA Cy Vance has failed to prosecute Ivanka Trump. Orlins said that wouldn’t be the case under her watch.
The comment was made on Twitter during night 4 of the Republican National Convention (RNC).
“Yet another person speaking tonight who Cy Vance should have prosecuted, but didn’t. @IvankaTrump you won’t get off so easy when I’m Manhattan DA,” Orlins said, pretty clearly promising to prosecute a political opponent if elected. The non-prosecution Orlins appears to be referring to goes back several years. Per ProPublica:
In the spring of 2012, Donald Trump’s two eldest children, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr., found themselves in a precarious legal position. For two years, prosecutors in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office had been building a criminal case against them for misleading prospective buyers of units in the Trump SoHo, a hotel and condo development that was failing to sell. Despite the best efforts of the siblings’ defense team, the case had not gone away. An indictment seemed like a real possibility. The evidence included emails from the Trumps making clear that they were aware they were using inflated figures about how well the condos were selling to lure buyers.[…]Ultimately, Vance overruled his own prosecutors. Three months after the meeting [with Trump lawyer Marc Kasowitz], [Vance] told them to drop the case. Kasowitz subsequently boasted to colleagues about representing the Trump children, according to two people. He said that the case was “really dangerous,” one person said, and that it was “amazing I got them off.” (Kasowitz denied making such a statement.)
Orlins, a criminal justice reform advocate who formerly appeared on Survivor and the Amazing Race, is one of nine progressive candidates running to replace Vance. DA Vance, as you may know, has fought all the way up to the Supreme Court in an effort to enforce a state criminal subpoena for President Donald Trump’s tax returns as part of an investigation of the Trump Organization.
While many on the left have said the “lock her up” chants at Trump rallies were a dark sign of burgeoning authoritarianism and the politicization of justice, here Orlins essentially made a campaign promise to target Ivanka Trump.
Joe Biden’s running mate Kamala Harris, a career prosecutor, was criticized in June 2019 for similar rhetoric. Harris was running for president at the time.
The other Manhattan DA candidates are: Alvin Bragg, Janos Marton, Dan Quart, Tahanie Aboushi, Tali Farhadian Weinstein, Liz Crotty, Diana Florence, and Lucy Lang.
[Image via YouTube screengrab]