The Obscure Law NY Prosecutors Could Use to Charge Trump Years From Now
New York law says that “any period… during which the defendant was continuously outside this state” doesn’t count, up to an extra five years.
Adam Kaufmann, an attorney who ran the Manhattan DA’s investigative unit for three years, said he doesn’t remember ever relying on this clock-stopper in his prosecutors’ cases. But he recognizes it as a useful tool—one that would have to appear on any indictment of Trump to establish from the get-go that any criminal charges are timely.
“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,” Kaufmann said.
But, he added, “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.”