“The power of the case - the surprise factor, the shock value,” also fades, Shapiro said, meaning a jury might be less impressed by allegations that have been public for so long. Memories fade, and evidence and records get lost or destroyed. Practically speaking, though, the passage of time could affect the case in other ways. Trump visited New York rarely over the four years of his presidency and now lives mostly in Florida and New Jersey. In New York, the clock can stop on the statute of limitations when a potential defendant is continuously outside the state. In social media posts, he insists that the statute of limitations “long ago expired,” calling the matter “old news.”īut that’s not always how the law works. For misdemeanors, it’s just two years.ĭoes that mean prosecutors have run out of time? Trump thinks so. New York’s statute of limitations for most felonies is five years. The hush-money payments and Cohen’s reimbursements happened more than six years ago. So far, the only charges have been against Weisselberg, who pleaded guilty, and the Trump Organization, which was convicted in December of an unrelated offense: scheming to dodge taxes on company-paid perks such as free apartments and cars for executives. The Manhattan district attorney’s office opened its own investigation into the payments in 2019 and has revisited it several times since while expanding the probe into Trump’s business dealings and other topics. The Manhattan district attorney’s office has declined to comment on the investigation.įederal prosecutors entered into a non-prosecution agreement with the National Enquirer’s owner, which admitted paying McDougal to help Trump, but they declined to seek a criminal charge against the then-sitting president. “He’s loud, he’s brash, so proving that he had specific intent to fraud, one is almost left with the idea that, ‘well, if he has that specific intent of fraud, he has it all of the time, because that’s his personality,’” said Shapiro, a lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, “grossed up” Cohen’s reimbursement for the Daniels payment for “tax purposes,” according to federal prosecutors who filed criminal charges against the lawyer in connection with the payments in 2018.ĭavid Shapiro, a fraud risk and financial crimes specialist and former FBI special agent, said a potential case against Trump could be “especially difficult” when it comes to proving his intent and knowledge of wrongdoing. He was then reimbursed by Trump, whose company logged the reimbursements as legal expenses.Įarlier in 2016, Cohen also arranged for former Playboy model Karen McDougal to be paid $150,000 by the publisher of the supermarket tabloid the National Enquirer, which squelched her story in a journalistically dubious practice known as “catch-and-kill.” Specifically, District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s team appears to be looking at whether Trump or anyone committed crimes in arranging the payments, or in the way they accounted for them internally at the Trump Organization.Ĭohen paid porn actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 through a shell company Cohen set up. The investigation centers on hush-money payments made in 2016 to two women who alleged that they had extramarital encounters with Trump, who has denied their accounts of his infidelity. Here’s a refresher on how things got to this point:
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