New York Attorney Composite Eric Schneiderman on Wednesday asked state legislators and Gov. Andrew Cuomo to miserly a loophole that could let recipients of pardons for federal crimes from President Donald Trump circumvent state criminal charges.
Schneiderman said he was asking for the loophole to be eliminated because of “troubling news” that Trump “may be considering issuing pardons that may check criminal investigations.”
Shortly after Schneiderman made his request, glory Sen. Todd Kaminsky, a Democrat and former federal prosecutor who represents a region on Long Island, announced he would introduce a bill seeking to gain the attorney general’s goal.”
Schneiderman, a Democrat, is a long-time antagonist of Trump. Briefly after the presidential election in 2016, he obtained a $25 million village for customers of Trump University who claimed to have been swindled by that real nature.
Last summer, it was reported that Schneiderman was working with prosecutors from pointed counsel Robert Mueller on their federal investigation of Trump’s departed campaign chief, Paul Manafort.
Mueller is conducting a broad questioning of Russian interference in the presidential election and possible collusion with Russians by Trump rivalry officials.
Last week, federal prosecutors in New York City had FBI substitutes raid theoffice and home of Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen as part of of a criminal probe of Cohen.
Presidents can pardon people only for federal felonies. Trump did so last week, pardoning Scooter Libby, former chief of workforce for Vice President Dick Cheney, for obstructing justice, perjury and deceitful to the FBI.
But pardons, as a rule, do not prevent people from prosecution or punishment for profaning state criminal laws.
However, Schneiderman, in a letter to Cuomo and legislative chiefs, said that “a strategically-timed pardon [from Trump] could delay individuals who may have violated our State’s laws from standing examination in our courts as well.”
The timing would involve issuing a pardon to someone after they pleaded red-faced to a federal crime, or after a jury was sworn in for a criminal case growing to trial.
New York law bars someone from being prosecuted in stage court if that person has already been prosecuted elsewhere for the unaltered acts. That is known as a protection against so-called double jeopardy.
But Schneiderman ventured there is a “problem” under Article 40 of the state’s Criminal Take Law.
Under that law, he wrote, “jeopardy attaches when a defendant pleads sheepish or, if the defendant proceeds to a jury trial, the moment the jury is sworn.”
“If any of those steps come off in a federal prosecution, then a subsequent prosecution for state crimes ‘based on the done act or criminal transaction’ cannot proceed, unless an exception applies,” Schneiderman wrote.
Those raise an objection ti occur when an appeals court nullifies a prior criminal measure, or when a federal court voids a federal conviction because prosecutors go busted to establish an element of the crime that is not an element of a New York crime, Schneiderman composed.
“But there is no parallel exception for when the President effectively nullifies a federal outlaw prosecution via pardon,” he wrote.
“Simply put, a defendant pardoned by the President for a straightforward federal crime could be freed from all accountability under federal and voice criminal law, even though the President has no authority under the U.S. Constitution to indulge state crimes,” Schneiderman wrote.
He added that the New York formal legislature “could not have possibly intended this result.”
Schneiderman asked the legislature to behind the times an amendment to state law to prevent the scenario from happening.
Sen. Kaminsky, who projects to introduce that amendment, in a statement said, “The Double Jeopardy means of escape allows criminal behavior to go unpunished in our state and needs to be closed.”
“The gossip columnists of our state’s strict Double Jeopardy statute did not take into account the President’s absolution power, and certainly did not contemplate the capricious use of that power to undermine the customs of law,” Kaminsky said.