Another day, another possibility that the president of the United States could be implicated in a federal crime. No, we’re not talking about the allegation that Donald Trump directed his former lawyer to pay off a porn star to buy her silence on the eve of the election. No, we don’t mean the claims that he told the same lawyer to pay The National Enquirer for the rights to a Playboy Playmate’s story about their alleged affair. No, we’re not referring to his son’s infamous Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer, or even to his very guilty former campaign chairman. Truly, there are so many allegations of criminality to choose from! In this case, however, we speak of a Thursday report from The Wall Street Journal that federal prosecutors are investigating: a) the possibility that Trump’s inaugural committee “misspent” a portion of the $107 million it raised in donations, b) whether any foreign money made its way into the inaugural fund, and c) whether “some of the committee’s top donors gave money in exchange for access to the incoming Trump administration, policy concessions, or to influence official administration positions,” any and all of which, if true, would violate federal law. Per the Journal:

View more

The investigation partly arises out of materials seized in the federal probe of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s business dealings, according to people familiar with the matter. In April raids of Mr. Cohen’s home, office, and hotel room, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents obtained a recorded conversation between Mr. Cohen and Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former adviser to Melania Trump, who worked on the inaugural events. In the recording, Ms. Wolkoff expressed concern about how the inaugural committee was spending money, according to a person familiar with the Cohen investigation.

Manhattan federal prosecutors in recent months asked Tennessee developer Franklin L. Haney for documents related to a $1 million donation he made to Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee in December 2016, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Haney in early April hired Mr. Cohen, at the time serving as Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, to help obtain a $5 billion loan from the Energy Department for a nuclear-power project, the Journal has previously reported.

Haney was reportedly asked to turn over his correspondence with committee members, his calendars, and his paperwork for the donation. His lawyer did not return the Journal’s requests for comment.

Not only are the funds themselves under scrutiny, but, as ProPublic and WNYC reported on Friday, the Trump Organization apparently made a pretty penny off of the inauguration itself, with the committee paying the family business for “rooms, meals and event space at the company’s Washington hotel.” And who was at the center of it all, but the soon-to-be First Daughter:

During the planning, Ivanka Trump, the president-elect’s eldest daughter and a senior executive with the Trump Organization, was involved in negotiating the price the hotel charged the 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee for venue rentals. A top inaugural planner emailed Ivanka and others at the company to “express my concern” that the hotel was overcharging for its event spaces, worrying of what would happen “when this is audited.”

If the Trump hotel charged more than the going rate for the venues, it could violate tax law. The inaugural committee’s payments to the Trump Organization and Ivanka Trump’s role have not been previously reported or disclosed in public filings.

Peter Mirijanian, a spokesman for Ivanka’s ethics lawyer, told WNYC and ProPublica that, “When contacted by someone working on the inauguration, Ms. Trump passed the inquiry on to a hotel official and said only that any resulting discussions should be at a ‘fair market rate.’ Ms. Trump was not involved in any additional discussions.”

For its part, the White House is certainly acting like some sort of financial tomfoolery on the part of the committee is a foregone conclusion, and at this point is simply trying to keep Trump’s name out of it. In an interview Thursday night with Fox News, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders insisted, “This didn’t have anything to do with the president. The president was focused on the transition, and building out a new government, and preparing to take office. The role that the president had in the inauguration was to raise his hand and take the oath.” Sanders also claimed, as we assume she is contractually obligated to do, that Democrats are to blame for all of this.

“I think this is a perfect example of Democrats recognizing that all the accusations that they’ve made, and the information that came out in the Michael Cohen case, has nothing to do with the president,” she said. “So now they’re going to plan—I would say plan B, but this is more like plan D or E or F to take this president down.” The nerve!

More Great Stories from Vanity Fair

— The Democrats are facing a generational reckoning

— How a movie producer and Hollywood invented conservative commentator Ben Shapiro

— Real estate, greed, extortion: a true tale of Miami Vice

— Sandra Bland’s sisters are still searching for answers about her death

— It sure looks like Saudi Arabia used veterans to funnel money to Trump

Looking for more? Sign up for our daily Hive newsletter and never miss a story.