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Trump’s tax documents are with New York prosecutors. But the clock is ticking.


Last Monday, the Supreme Court, in an unsigned order consisting of a single sentence, denied former President Donald Trump’s request that the nation’s highest court stop the enforcement of a subpoena issued by a New York state grand jury. That subpoena was directed to Mazars USA LLP, the accounting firm that prepared Trump’s personal tax returns and those of various Trump organizations. And sure enough, by Thursday, Trump’s tax returns and underlying tax documents were delivered into the hands of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance.

Trump technically lost the court battle not to have to produce his tax materials, but he may have won the longer-term war.

Trump technically lost the court battle not to have to produce his tax materials, but he may have won the longer-term war — to slow the progress of the criminal investigations, perhaps to a point where prosecutors can no longer bring certain cases that have passed their statutes of limitations. Recently, the New York Legislature passed a new law that pauses the statute of limitations for the period of time when a president is in office; Congress has started a similar effort, but it needs to move faster.

The Supreme Court’s decision last week in the Mazars USA case was hardly a surprise, given that Trump had already lost this fight once before. Last July, the Supreme Court ruled against Trump’s argument that a sitting president should not be forced to respond to a state criminal subpoena. But the court mentioned that there might be other, less novel objections that could be raised about the subpoena. Trump’s attorneys quickly took the hint, and again asked the Supreme Court to stay enforcement of the subpoena, this time claiming that the subpoena was overbroad and issued in bad faith. But the court’s denial of that application this week finally ended the litigation, and Mazars USA has at long last produced the subpoenaed documents to the New York state prosecutors.

All white-collar crime prosecutors know that a financial crimes investigation starts with the documents. Our financial system is based on recorded transactions — bank records, tax records, accounting records — and those records become the evidence of the crime. Without financial records, other types of evidence such as witness testimony or surveillance are simply inadequate to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt.

That is why the courts didn’t buy the former president’s argument that the subpoenas to Mazars USA — which called for, among other things, all tax return and tax preparation materials, financial statements, contracts and agreements, and all communications with Trump and his organizations — were overbroad. If prosecutors subpoena too narrow a set of documents, they run the risk that other relevant — or even exculpatory — documents may pop up for the first time at trial. That’s a chance no prosecutor can take.

Without financial records, other types of evidence such as witness testimony or surveillance are simply inadequate to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt.

But the prosecutors investigating Trump’s financial dealings still face a number of challenges. First, almost all federal and state criminal law violations have a deadline known as a statute of limitations, beyond which a suspect cannot be charged with a crime. Statutes of limitations vary widely among states and the federal system. Some serious crimes may have statutes of limitations as long as 10 or 20 years. In certain states, homicide and some types of sexual assault have no statutes of limitations. But most federal offenses carry a five-year statute of limitations. In New York, the alleged financial crimes that Vance is most likely investigating — bank fraud, insurance fraud and tax fraud — carry a statute of limitations of only six years. So Trump is already working with a clock quickly ticking down, to his advantage.

Second, financial investigations are time consuming, and a U.S. president…



Read More: Trump’s tax documents are with New York prosecutors. But the clock is ticking.

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