According to Asawin Suebsaeng and Jose Pagliery of the Daily Beast, Donald Trump’s choice to move his residence from Manhattan to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, likely gave New York prosecutors more time to pursue their investigations into his business operations.
According to Raw Story, under typical circumstances, investigators and prosecutors in New York have five years to file charges after an investigation is launched, according to the report. According to the Beast, though, an obscure law can be exploited to double that time.
Prosecutors have been working against the clock to make the case for a criminal indictment or indictments while the former president tries to run out the clock with a barrage of legal challenges and maneuvers.
According to the report, “Law enforcement in New York has five years from the date of an alleged crime to officially file charges for most felonies, but under New York law § 30.10(4)(a)(i), that clock stops for up to five more years when a defendant is outside the state,” adding, “That 10-year grace period means Trump’s time in the White House and his post-presidential political exile at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida may be gifting prosecutors much-needed extra time.”
The Beast is reporting investigators are deep into “poring over thousands of spreadsheets and financial records from the Trump Organization and slowly building a case against Trump for allegedly inflating property values, lying on business forms, dodging taxes, duping banks,” before adding that sources have hinted that a “team of Manhattan assistant district attorneys has considered the use of the state’s clock-stopping measure in the Trump investigation.”
Former Manhattan prosecutor Adam Kaufmann says he can’t recall a case in which the law was used.
“You don’t often have white-collar cases that are so… old. It just doesn’t happen that much that you’re trying to get something from more than five years ago,” he explained before adding, “It’s easy to prove he was not in the state of New York. There’s going to be records of where he was physically located every day for four years.”
When told about the statute, advisers to the former president were stunned, according to the story, with several wondering, “How is that legal?”
