Updated: November 13, 2020 8:45:33 pm
US President Donald Trump speaks on the results of the 2020 US Presidential Election in the Brady Press Conference Room at the White House in Washington, USA, November 5, 2020. (Reuters / Carlos Barria)
President Donald Trump lost more than one election last week. When you leave the White House in January, you will also lose the constitutional protection against prosecution afforded to a sitting president.
After January 20, Trump, who has refused to budge and is fighting to keep his job, will be more vulnerable than ever to a pending grand jury investigation by the Manhattan district attorney into the president’s family business and his practices, as well as your taxes.
The two-year inquest, Trump’s only known active criminal investigation, has been stalled since last fall, when the president sued to block a subpoena for his tax returns and other records, a bitter dispute he has before states for the second time. United. Supreme Court. A ruling is expected soon.
Trump has argued that the investigation by the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., a Democrat, is a politically motivated fishing expedition. But if the Supreme Court rules that Vance is entitled to the searches and he uncovers possible crimes, Trump could face a settling of scores with law enforcement, further increasing political tensions and creating the alarming specter of a criminal conviction. , or even prison, for an ex. President.
“You will never have more protection from Vance than you have now,” said Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas.
“Vance has been the wild card here,” added Vladeck. “And there is very little that even a new administration that wants to put the past in the past could formally do to stop it.”
An attorney for the president, Jay Sekulow, declined to comment through a spokesman.
The district attorney’s investigation into a sitting president has become even more important because Trump’s past use of his presidential power (pardoning his close associates accused of federal crimes) suggests that he will make liberal use of the clemency pen in name of your associates and relatives. and possibly even himself, as he claimed to have the right to do.
But his power of pardon does not extend to state crimes, such as the possible violations that Vance’s office is investigating.
The Vance investigation could take on enormous significance if the incoming Biden administration, in trying to unify the country and avoid the appearance of retaliation against Trump, avoids further federal investigations.
Such a move would not bind the district attorney, an independent elected state official.
Vance’s attorneys acknowledged during the court dispute over the subpoena that the Constitution prohibits them from prosecuting a president while in office, but the district attorney has said nothing about what could happen once Trump leaves the White House.
Danny Frost, a spokesman for Vance, declined to comment. It is unclear whether the office will determine that crimes were committed and choose to prosecute Trump or anyone in his orbit.
Vance’s actions in the coming months are likely to subject him to increasing political scrutiny. Trump will leave the White House amid calls for him to face criminal charges and a drum of strident criticism from the left that he has evaded any legal consequences for his conduct over the years.
On the one hand, Vance could face pressure to resign from any position that allows the country to move forward after a controversial presidential election. On the other hand, the district attorney was harshly criticized for his 2012 decision not to pursue an indictment against Trump’s children, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr., after they were accused of misleading investors in a project. of condo-hotel. Vance has said that after a two-year investigation, his office was unable to prove that a crime was committed.
Some legal experts said he would send the wrong message if Vance had evidence to substantiate the charges, but decided to stay away from prosecution of Trump.
“That would put the president above the law,” said Anne Milgram, a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan and a Democratic attorney general in New Jersey and a frequent critic of Trump.
And because Trump has repeatedly complained that the investigation was part of a broad partisan witch hunt, any decision to end it once the president left office could be seen as a tacit recognition that such criticisms were justified.
Few facts about the course of the district attorney’s investigation or about the individuals or potential crimes being examined have been publicly disclosed because the investigation is protected by grand jury secrecy.
But during the legal battle over the subpoena for Vance, which was seeking eight years of Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns and other records from his accounting firm, prosecutors suggested in court documents that they were investigating a variety of possible financial crimes. They include insurance fraud and criminal tax evasion, as well as grand theft and conspiracies to defraud, which together are the New York State equivalent of federal bank fraud charges.
And prosecutors argued in court that the documents they had demanded from the accounting firm, Mazars USA, represented “central evidence” for their investigation.
But they have provided few details beyond citing multiple news reports detailing a range of possible criminal conduct by the president and his associates, including a series of 2018 New York Times articles that described possible tax crimes committed by Trump based on a detailed analysis of some of your tax return data obtained by the newspaper.
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