It looks like almost all the news coverage on the impending legal action against the Trump Organization is colored by the input of attorney Ronald Fischetti, who represents former president Donald J. Trump. I don’t begrudge reporters from CBS News, Politico and Reuters using Fischetti as a source, but it has definitely colored how the issue is being discussed. The result is downright confusion.

Fischetti’s agenda is pretty obvious. He wants to pre-spin some really bad news that is likely going to be announced in the near future by Cy Vance Jr., the Manhattan prosecutor. Specifically, he wants to prepare people to hear that Donald Trump’s corporation is being charged with serious crimes and that some of his top employees are facing felony charges. Importantly, however, Fischetti wants to emphasize that his client is not being charged, at least not yet. And he wants people to know that the charges don’t pertain to payoffs to porn stars and Penthouse models. He’s also suggested that the pending indictments don’t touch on over- and undervaluation of the corporation’s assets.

If all of that is true, and we have to take Fischetti’s self-interested word for that right now, then it appears that the charges will be limited in scope and confined to a failure to properly account for company perks like cars, apartments and even college tuition. The argument then goes that in similar circumstances, companies are ordinarily allowed to pay back taxes with interest and fines rather than being hauled into criminal court. The same is true of corporate management.

So far, so good. Charges are brought, and Trump-allied lawyers argue that it’s a selective prosecution and an abuse of discretion. This is unlikely to work in court, but it will be pretty effective with public opinion because it’s true that these crimes aren’t usually charged.

So, what’s missing here?

Everyone seems to agree that Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg is the true target of the coming indictments. The prosecutors want him to talk and he won’t cooperate, so they’re going to try to change his mind by threatening to put him in jail. That makes perfect sense except that he would not likely face any jail time for the crime of minor corporate or even personal tax evasion. The types of back taxes and fines we’re talking about wouldn’t cripple a man of his wealth either. If some of his family members are ensnared here, that could help focus his mind, but they’re not likely to face jail time or crippling fines either.

Now, the reporters didn’t restrict themselves to taking to Fischetti. They also talked to knowledgeable attorneys and prosecutors who assured them that this could be just the beginning. More charges could be coming, including against the former president and his adult children. That’s all consistent with this being about getting Weisselberg or others to testify against Trump. But the charges under discussion seem insufficient to the task.

Perhaps for this reason, some of the speculation has drifted off a bit to discussion of what a conviction could mean for the Trump Organization. But there’s often no real specificity on this point. Take the CBS News version as an example:

If the Trump Organization were to be charged, [Keir] Dougall [a CBS News legal contributor and former federal prosecutor] said the company could face adverse business consequences from an indictment, and the environment for the Trump Organization could worsen if there is a conviction.

That’s tells almost nothing about the adverse consequences might be. Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold, who for several years now has been on the Trump finances like white on rice, offered some ideas during an appearance on MSNBC.

“Not merely being indicted is going to change that much, but if they plead guilty to any of these crimes, there is a number of implications, the banks could call in the loans and the liquor licenses as the golf clubs and hotels, they could call in the liquor licenses, because companies with felony charges cannot own a liquor license,” he explained. “So it could have implications for companies that are nowhere near New York could not have a liquor license.”

It’s hard to run an attractive luxury hotel or golf resort without a liquor license, but it’s not the end of the world. It’s not the kind of thing that would get Weisselberg to talk, nor would the Trump Organization find it an insurmountable problem. If banks called in loans, that could be a different kettle of fish but it just seems unlikely that this threat would lead anywhere for the prosecutors.

So, maybe the problem here is that Fischetti’s understanding or account of the prosecutors’ intentions is not accurate. Maybe the indictments will be about a lot more than dishonest accounting of employee compensation.

Let’s go for a moment to the Politico version of this story:

According to Fischetti, members of Vance’s team said they were considering bringing charges against the Trump Organization and its individual employees related to alleged failures to pay taxes on corporate benefits and perks. It has been widely reported that those perks included cars and apartments and appear to only involve a small number of executives.

“We asked, ‘Is there anything else?’” Fischetti told POLITICO. “They said, ‘No.’”

“It’s crazy that that’s all they had,” he added.

If they actually have more than Fischetti is saying, then this isn’t the best pre-spin. His argument seems to be that the prosecutors did a major years-long investigation and found essentially nothing. If they found a lot more, then Fischetti isn’t doing a good job of prepping people.

When he says “it’s crazy” that they didn’t find more crimes to prosecute, I don’t think he means the prosecutors are incompetent investigators, but rather that they shouldn’t bother indicting anyone on such tacky-tack fouls. It’s a good talking point, but one that would be immediately rendered inoperative if Cy Vance Jr. comes in bigger than expected.

Which brings me back to the point that this doesn’t add up. This has never been an investigation over the Trump Organizations perks. As a step to something bigger, the subject seems wholly inadequate. So maybe Fischetti is confused or deliberately misrepresenting what he was told. It could be that the explanation is that Fischetti is a lousy lawyer, much like the attorneys who represented Trump in his second impeachment trial.

The only thing I know for sure is that things will only become clear when Cy Vance Jr. talks for himself. I hope we don’t have to wait too much longer.