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

[catbyte]

Financial investigations are time consuming, and a U.S. president under criminal investigation has a number of tools at his disposal that can burn up even more time.

Feb. 27, 2021, 4:36 AM EST
By Carol C. Lam, former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California

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 — 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.

snip

The state of New York has taken common sense action to remedy this problem with respect to potential state prosecutions of former presidents. On Feb. 10, the New York state Legislature passed the “New York No Citizen is Above the Law Act,” sponsored by the Senate's Deputy Majority Leader Michael Gianaris. The new law provides that if a former president is charged with a New York state crime, the amount of time he was president is excluded from the calculation of the statute of limitations. Whether this law can apply to criminal conduct that predated the law’s passage remains to be seen, but there is a sound argument that it can be applied if the statute of limitations had not yet expired when the act was passed. This is why these laws must be passed as soon as possible.

Federal prosecutions of former presidents need the same kinds of safeguards. In the U.S. Congress last year, the House of Representatives advanced a bill titled the “No President is Above the Law Act of 2020,” introduced by Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., which pauses the statute of limitations for federal criminal offenses that are committed by the president or vice president prior to or during their term of office. This bill provides badly-needed balance to the Justice Department’s conclusion that a sitting president cannot be indicted. Congress should act to pass it quickly. Until it does, the clock is still ticking.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-s-tax-documents-are-new-york-prosecutors-clock-ticking-ncna1258998