“Why do the media and political pundits always say Trump will crush his federal cases. Why doesn’t the case go on pause to freeze the statute of limitations until he is out of office?”
— Patrick Bonomo, Palm Springs, California
Hi Patrick,
We don’t know what Trump will do until he does it, but his words and actions suggest that he’d get rid of his federal criminal cases if he gets the power to do so. (Presidents don’t have such power over state cases.)
As for Trump’s federal cases being paused, that raises some novel questions to which we might never fully learn the answers.
The Justice Department has a policy of not charging or prosecuting sitting presidents. (You may recall this coming up during the Mueller investigation when Trump was president.) In a 2000 memorandum on the policy, the government noted that the statute of limitations could run out if a president isn’t charged while in office. But the policy concluded that the costs of subjecting a sitting president to prosecution outweigh the risks of a president escaping liability.
Trump’s situation is a little different. He wouldn’t have a statute of limitations issue, exactly. Those limitations come into play for bringing charges in a timely manner in the first place, and Trump has already been charged. There can be speedy trial issues leading to a case’s dismissal if the government fails to bring an already charged case to trial quickly enough, however.
But while Trump’s situation raises novel issues, the Justice Department’s rationale for not wanting to burden a sitting president with criminal process would likely effectively halt Trump’s prosecutions, even if he took no action to crush them entirely. That said, he probably would do so, which would make it a moot issue.
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