New York Democratic prosecutors who launched a criminal probe of former President Donald Trump and his companies appear to have come up completely empty, according to a report on Saturday.
Last fall, prosecutors convened a grand jury to hear alleged evidence against the former president but the jury’s six-month window is closing this week and there have been no charges filed, leading experts to speculate that there won’t be any. As such, the criminal investigation is “fizzling out,” according to the Washington Post.
The initial charges were brought by then-New York County District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. (D), who conceived that Trump may be guilty of manipulating the values of his properties in order to gain tax advantages and favorable loan rates. The grand jury was convened in November as part of that probe.
However, the probe continued through the end of Vance’s term with no charges brought against Trump. After he left office, the case then fell to Alvin Bragg who was left to decide whether to finish presenting evidence to the grand jury and request a decision on the allegations. But he paused the process.
The Post adds:
A key problem, some of those people said, was Bragg’s concern over whether former Trump fixer Michael Cohen should be used as a witness.
Bragg has said he will announce when the investigation is over, noting that even after the special grand jury disbanded, other grand juries hearing a broad range of criminal cases in New York would be available to take action in this one if needed.
Still, the expiration of the grand jury — and the departure in February of two senior prosecutors who said Bragg was stalling the inquiry — makes any potential indictment of Trump seem unlikely, legal observers have said. By the time Mark Pomerantz and Carey Dunne quit, the grand jury had been inactive for weeks, with jurors being told to stay home, a person with knowledge of the issue previously said.
Trump has repeatedly said that his business — the Trump Organization — has operated within the law while also accusing New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is also investigating him, of engaging in a political vendetta.
When she ran for office in 2018, she vowed to launch wide-ranging investigations into Trump, his family, and his businesses.
“We will use every area of the law to investigate President Trump and his business transactions and that of his family as well,” James told NBC News in December 2018.
“We want to investigate anyone in his orbit who has, in fact, violated the law,” said James, who was endorsed by then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
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