Why Does the Manhattan District Attorney Prosecute Small Defendants While Letting Larger Criminals Go?

Most movies don’t make me upset. In general, I don’t get emotionally involved because I feel some distance. However, I’m more involved when I watch the news on television. I’m reacting to it, thinking critically, cheering or complaining, and carrying on a monologue about issues. No one in my family likes to watch the news with me.

I was in “news” mode when I recently watched the movie Abacus: Small Enough to Jail. This documentary film from PBS Frontline, which is available now on video (nominated for an Academy Award and highly recommended), shows the unfortunate prosecution of a family who ran a community bank in New York City’s Chinatown. While the big banks received bailouts in the 2008 recession that they helped cause, this small, family-run bank serving the Chinese-American community became the only bank from that recession to be charged with a criminal offense.

The Sung family, operators of a small community bank prosecuted by Vance, in the "Abacus: Small Enough to Jail" movie.

Abacus had stringent loan standards and it had only 1/10 the default rate on loans that the big banks had. Despite having had one employee who had committed fraud, firing him immediately when they learned of it, and reporting this problem to the government, Abacus Bank was indicted on criminal charges. In the years that followed, the family stood tall as they were publicly shamed and dragged through a horrible prosecution that cost the taxpayers $10 million. The movie asks people not to reveal what happened in the end, so let’s just say it was a total waste of $10 million.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. let the big banks go (they received billions in bailouts from the federal government during the 2008 recession and he had ample time in which to hold them accountable for their damage after his election to the DA job in 2009). But he persisted in trying to take down one bank, ruining the lives of this family that had dedicated themselves to helping unbanked immigrants in New York’s Chinatown get loans, start businesses, and improve their lives. This prosecution was racially insensitive and it was disproportionate to the alleged crime.

I’ve rarely been more upset after watching a movie.

Prosecutors have a great deal of discretion, so it’s not easy to know when they make a mistake by choosing to prosecute or not prosecute one particular defendant. Cases are more difficult to prove than a layperson like me can know. But Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance, Jr. has demonstrated a pattern of going after smaller, poorer defendants while the larger ones escape with no consequences for the damage they have caused (and after people associated with them have made payments to his campaigns).

While I like to give someone the benefit of the doubt, this movie finally sealed the deal for me: Vance is a dangerous opportunist. He has not used his office to hold powerful people and companies accountable. Instead he has taken their money in the form of political donations while he’s gone after smaller fish like Abacus.

Vance Had Harvey Weinstein in 2015 and Let Him Go

In 2015, an Italian model named Ambra Battilana Gutierrez reported to the NYPD that she had been sexually assaulted by movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. Despite having an audio recording in which Weinstein admittedhis action (yes, the NYPD had her wired and it’s on tape), Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr., declined to prosecute Weinstein. It was not until late 2017 that the floodgates opened and dozens of women came forward to report decades’ worth of rape and sexual misconduct allegations against Weinstein, one of the most powerful figures in entertainment.

Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and Ambra Battilana Gutierrez, the woman who reported an assault from him in 2015. Source: Thetimes.co.uk.

As District Attorney, Vance could have stopped this behavior. It didn’t take the New York Times or the New Yorker much investigation at all to find droves of complainants. Vance failed to bring justice and prevent further crimes even though he had a tape of Weinstein admitting what he’d done. Was there a good explanation for why he failed to do so? Not enough evidence, said the DA’s office. And I’d be willing to defer to their wisdom once on something like this if that was the end of the story.

Unfortunately, it’s not. I hope you brought your bribe money.

Later, it came to light that Vance’s former law partner, who had contributed to his campaign, was a defense attorney for Weinstein. Also David Boies, an attorney for the Weinstein Company, together with his son and his law partners, had contributed a total of $182,000 to Vance’s election campaigns.

Vance Had a Fraud Case Against Baby Trump and Ivanka; He Let Them Go Also

In 2012, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office was preparing a case for fraud against Donald Trump, Jr. and Ivanka Trump, children of the current U.S. president. As Vogue reported, “Ivanka and Donald Jr. narrowly avoided criminal fraud charges in 2012 for allegedly misleading potential buyers at the flailing Trump Soho Hotel—because Vance dropped the mounting case after a meeting with Donald Trump Sr.’s personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz.”

The Trump SoHo project was not going well, but they misrepresented its success in order to con others to buy into it. ProPublica reported that Trump, Jr. had told a real estate publication that 55 percent of the units at Trump SoHo had been sold in April 2008. In June 2008, at an event for the foreign press at the Trump Tower in Manhattan, attended by Eric Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., and herself, Ivanka Trump announced to everyone present that 60 percent of the condos had been sold. In fact, the condo was performing badly in a tough market: by March of 2010, nearly two years later, only 15.8% of these condos had been sold.

Vance's office had a strong case against the Trumps. He dropped it after their attorney apparently bought him off. Screenshot: MSNBC.

But that wasn’t all. Propublica’s report added:
In one email, according to four people who have seen it, the Trumps discussed how to coordinate false information they had given to prospective buyers. In another, according to a person who read the emails, they worried that a reporter might be onto them. In yet another, Donald Jr. spoke reassuringly to a broker who was concerned about the false statements, saying that nobody would ever find out, because only people on the email chain or in the Trump Organization knew about the deception, according to a person who saw the email.
There was “no doubt” that the Trump children “approved, knew of, agreed to, and intentionally inflated the numbers to make more sales,” one person who saw the emails told us. “They knew it was wrong.”

Yes, there are crooks in the White House as well. By now, it should be obvious that the president himself seems to be stuck in middle school. But let’s stick to Vance for now.

The Manhattan DA’s office had been building this case for two years by 2012 when Cyrus Vance, Jr. decided to end it. As the New Yorkerexplained, “Vance