wen WULEE SIEGE : 19 for the Trump Organization records: it was a deep and encompassing order, ing to humor him—or, shortly, even to return his calls. In March 2017, reaching many years back. Trump fired him. Kushner also warned his father-in-law that the investigation was about Now, said Kushner, even without Bharara, the Southern District was to spill over from the Mueller team, with its narrow focus on Russian collu- looking to treat the Trump Organization as a Mob-like enterprise; its law- sion, to the Southern District of New York—that is, the federal prosecutor’s yers would use the RICO laws against it and go after the president as if he office in Manhattan—which would not be restricted to the Russia probe. This were a drug lord or Mob don. Kushner pointed out that corporations had was a work-around intended to circumvent the special counsel's restriction no Fifth Amendment privilege, and that you couldn't pardon a corpora- to Russia-related matters, but also an effort by the Mueller team to short- tion. As well, assets used in or derived from the commission of a crime : circuit any attempt by the president to disband or curtail its investiga- could be seized by the government. tion. By moving parts of the investigation to the Southern District, Mueller, In other words, of the more than five hundred companies and separate as Kushner explained to Trump, was ensuring that the investigation of the entities in which Donald Trump had been an officer, up until he became president would continue even without the special counsel. Mueller was president, many might be subject to forfeiture. One potential casualty of playing a canny, or ass-protecting, game, while also following precise pro- a successful forfeiture action was the president's signature piece of real cedures: even as he focused on the limited area of his investigation, he was estate: the government could seize Trump Tower. divvying up evidence of other possible crimes and sending it out to other — jurisd