The district attorney’s investigation of a sitting president has taken on even greater significance because Mr. Trump’s past use of his presidential power — pardoning those close to him charged with federal crimes — suggests he will make liberal use of the pardon pen on behalf of associates, family members and possibly even himself, as he claimed he has the right to do.
But his pardon power does not extend to state crimes, like the possible violations under investigation by Mr. Vance’s office.
Mr. Vance’s inquiry could take on outsized importance if the incoming Biden administration, in seeking to unify the country and avoid the appearance of retaliation against Mr. Trump, shies away from new federal investigations.
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Such a move would not bind the district attorney, an independent elected state official.
Mr. Vance’s lawyers acknowledged during the court fight over the subpoena that the Constitution bars them from prosecuting a president while in office, but the district attorney has said nothing about what might happen once Mr. Trump leaves the White House.
Danny Frost, a spokesman for Mr. Vance, declined to comment. It remains unclear whether the office will determine that crimes were committed and choose to prosecute Mr. Trump or anyone in his orbit.
Mr. Vance’s actions in the coming months are likely to put him under increasing political scrutiny. Mr. Trump will leave the White House amid calls for him to face criminal charges and a drumbeat of strident criticism from the left that he has evaded any legal consequences for his conduct over the years.
On the one hand, Mr. Vance could face pressure to forsake any charges to allow the country to move forward after a contentious presidential election. On the other, the district attorney was sharply criticized for his 2012 decision not to seek an indictment against Mr. Trump’s children, Ivanka Trump and Donald J. Trump Jr., after they were accused of misleading investors in a condo-hotel project. Mr. Vance has said that after a two-year investigation, his office could not prove a crime was committed.
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Some legal experts said it would send the wrong message if Mr. Vance had evidence to justify charges but decided to walk away from a prosecution of Mr. Trump.
“That would put the president above the law,” said Anne Milgram, a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan and Democratic attorney general in New Jersey and a frequent critic of Mr. Trump.
And because Mr. 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 acknowledgment that such criticism was justified.
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Few facts have been publicly disclosed about the course of the district attorney’s investigation or the people or potential crimes being examined because the inquiry is shielded by grand jury secrecy.
But during the legal battle over Mr. Vance’s subpoena, which sought eight years of Mr. Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns and other records from his accounting firm, prosecutors suggested in court papers that they were investigating a range of potential financial crimes. They include insurance fraud and criminal tax evasion, as well as grand larceny and scheming to defraud — which together are New York State’s 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 little in the way of specifics beyond citing multiple news reports that detailed a range of potential criminal conduct by the president and his associates, including a series of 2018 New York Times articles that outlined possible tax crimes committed by Mr. Trump based on a detailed analysis of some of his tax return data obtained by the newspaper.
Mr. Trump, before and during his presidency, declined to publicly release his tax returns, breaking with 40 years of White House tradition, and he vigorously fought attempts by Congress and state lawmakers to obtain them.
The district attorney’s inquiry, which began in the summer of 2018, was first thought to focus on hush money payments made on behalf of Mr. Trump just days before the 2016 presidential election to an adult film star who had claimed she had an affair with him.
But the subpoena for Mr. Trump’s tax returns underscores an apparent greater focus on potential tax crimes, which tax experts, former prosecutors and defense lawyers agree can be among the toughest cases for the government to win at trial.
The New York Times