Former president Donald Trump appears unlikely to face criminal charges in Manhattan court as a grand jury considering Trump’s case finishes its business this week. Trump was under investigation for falsely inflating the value of his assets in annual financial statements.
Multiple signs point to waning activity from prosecutors, according to the New York Times. At least three crucial witnesses have not been in contact with the district attorney’s office in months, and have not been asked to testify. Additionally, a key prosecutor once pivotal to the probe has taken a step back from it, reported the Times.
The remaining members of the prosecution team, which shrunk after the resignation of two senior prosecutors, Mark F. Pomerantz and Carey R. Dunne, have all but cleared out of an expansive conference room in the district attorney’s office previously used for mapping out the grand jury presentation.
Opened by Cyrus R. Vance Jr. over three years ago, the criminal investigation into Trump’s businesses practices continued under the auspices of Manhattan district attorney Alvin L. Bragg. Even before the latest murmurs that the grand jury could be coming to a close, multiple members of Bragg’s team felt there was dwindling evidence to support the case, prompting him to suspend the grand jury presentation. Dunne and Pomerantz left soon after.
Bragg has a limited window of time to advance the case, as the grand jury expires at the end of the month and the process of impaneling another one would be onerous. New jurors would need to be briefed and a new presentation of evidence would need to be prepared, an increasingly challenging task given that many of the facts of the case are very dated as is. Sources told the Times that the inquiry is unlikely to yield an indictment unless a witness cooperates unexpectedly.
Bragg’s prosecutors have issued a slew of new subpoenas, but the majority still aim to determine whether Trump falsely inflated the value of his assets in annual financial statements rather than broach a new angle. Recipients of subpoenas include a major financial institution that may have received Trump’s financial statements, the Trump Organization, and the New York City agency that tracks municipal vendors, including some Trump entities in the Bronx and Central Park.
Bragg assured the Times this month that the prosecution was not stagnating, and that his team was interviewing new witnesses and considering new evidence.
“It’s a work in progress,” Bragg said. “We’ve got seasoned prosecutors working every day. It’s not going to be on a timeline.”
Even if criminal indictment fails to materialize from Bragg’s efforts, New York Attorney General Letitia James may be launching her own civil lawsuit against Trump, a lawyer from her office mentioned at a court hearing Monday.