This week was set to mark the beginning of the end of an era in the fight against crime in New York City, with Alvin Bragg being elected on Tuesday to succeed Manhattan prosecutor Cyrus Vance Jr. after his 12 years in office. For at least one person with a vested interest in the transition, the break will not be as sharp as it might have hoped: Donald Trump.

Thursday the Washington To post reported that Vance’s office had convened a new “long-term grand jury to hear evidence of the Trump Organization’s financial practices,” extending its investigation as well as the corresponding uncertainty over Trump’s criminal exposure, on which the office has been investigating since 2019.

It’s hard to say exactly what this means since the investigation was supposed to end now. Back at the end of May, Washington To post reported that Vance’s office “recently” summoned a special grand jury for a six-month term to investigate the Trump organization, meaning the jury’s term is expected to expire in a few weeks. Vance has also on several occasions noted – as recently as end of September – that his plan was to finalize the decisions on who to indict in the investigation before he leaves office at the end of December.

During much of the nearly two-and-a-half-year investigation, it looked like Vance could build a case against Trump, but that has yet to materialize despite the hype. Investigation has begun in earnest when Vance’s office learned in July 2019 that federal prosecutors had concluded their own exploration of the “secret money” payments Trump made to Stormy Daniels in the 2016 presidential election. Vance’s office cited files from the Trump Organization and Trump’s accounting firm, which were got last February after legal disputes that reached the Supreme Court. That same month, Vance recruited a veteran white-collar crime lawyer to lead the investigation, and in May, the office opened the first special grand jury. Over the spring and summer, the office reportedly tried to persuade CFO Allen Weisselberg to cooperate against Trump, apparently creating momentum towards pursuing Trump himself, but the longtime lieutenant did not turn around and was indicted with the organization in July on alleged tax evasion over compensation for the company. The impending expiration of the original grand jury’s tenure – coupled with Vance’s departure from office shortly thereafter – seemed bound to force some sort of final judgment on Trump’s possible criminal liability in New York.

The To postThursday’s article may put a charity gloss on the latest development, reporting that “someone familiar with the matter said the second grand jury is to review how former President Donald Trump’s company is valuing its assets.” , which “appears to be a separate issue from that described in the indictments of the first grand jury. The suggestion that this could have been a deliberately planned phase of the investigation – first the tax issues, now the issues assessment – is difficult to reconcile with Vance’s repeated statements about his intention to complete him before his term ends, as well as years of value from the office’s statements and reporting on the scope and progress of investigation.

The outlines of Vance’s investigation – and Trump’s corresponding criminal exposure – have never been entirely clear, but office and articles in the press have suggested at various times that the investigation already encompasses a variety of possible financial frauds concerning the value of Trump’s properties and assets based on potential misrepresentation at lenders, insurers, and tax authorities. Given this ostensibly broad scope, Vance’s investigation seemed the most likely of all those involving Trump – with the exception of the Mueller investigation – to trap the man himself. But it is one thing to identify suspicious areas to investigate, and it is another to actually investigate them, to identify more than numerical discrepancies but significant misrepresentation, to assess the financial reporting conventions that can be context and industry specific, and, beyond all this, to identify guilty individuals with fraudulent intent. The strong sense that Trump is a con man – that he has lied and cheated in life whenever possible – does not replace that job, which has always meant that indicting Trump would be a much more complicated and unlikely undertaking than most of the others. legal experts suggested.

What to remember from the news of this second grand jury is far from clear. Prosecutors would have been considering whether to indict Matthew Calamari, chief operating officer of the Trump organization, with charges similar to those Weisselberg faces regarding tax evasion, but if the To postThe s reports are correct, it would make no sense to constitute a second grand jury for that purpose alone. Prosecutors could seek an extension of the first grand jury’s term based on the theory that its work is ongoing, although jurors are expected to vote in favor of such an extension and that a court should approve it.

The distinction between these two scenarios – an extension of the first grand jury, as opposed to the creation of a new one – may seem negligible, but it matters in New York City because prosecutors cannot admit hearsay before a grand jury. This means that if prosecutors want to indict someone on a second grand jury for conduct for which key witnesses testified in the first grand jury, those witnesses would have to be called to testify again, and there would be a risk that they provide inconsistent information. testimony – something that, in turn, would make them more likely to be cross-examined at trial. This is one of the reasons Daniel Alonso, the former deputy attorney general in Vance’s office, told me before the To poston the new grand jury that it would be “far better to vote on all charges before that grand jury expires.”

At the moment, there is little to provide in terms of a reliable prognosis – and just enough information to accommodate a wide range of possibilities.

The one that could be most successful among many anti-Trump legal watchers is that a new grand jury may mean Vance prosecutors are on to something important and may prepare to charge more people for unsafe conduct. related to the tax shenanigans alleged in the pending indictment against Weisselberg. and the Trump Organization – maybe even Trump himself. This tantalizing scenario remains possible but is unlikely, mainly because if a major development of the kind that has been widely seen as a necessary precondition for Trump’s accusation had occurred (such as Weisselberg’s cooperation or testimony by ‘a grand jury of another key insider), there’s a good chance this has been made public. But nothing significant about the investigation has come into the public domain since Vance’s last significant comment on the investigation – just six weeks ago – when he reiterated his intention to complete it by the end of the year.

On the other end of the spectrum, Vance may have decided to let prosecutors move forward by focusing on asset valuation issues despite any reason to believe a major breakthrough is just around the corner. An uncharitable observer might call it a fishing expedition – or perhaps an unsportsmanlike move on Vance’s part to avoid responsibility for a result that will disappoint many in the world. yet another closely monitored Trump’s investigation which did not result in accusations against Trump himself. After all, Vance’s office has a checkered the story with Major White collar surveys, and leaving the job to Bragg – who campaign on spectacularly increasing executing white-collar workers – is probably a nicer way to quit than being the second much-touted prosecutor to fail against one of America’s worst human beings.

Meanwhile, Trump still faces other real and possible criminal investigations of varying strength. The Westchester County District Attorney’s Office, now headed by a former federal prosecutor who happens to have once been an anti-Trump cable information attorney commentator, recently open an investigation that appears to concern possible false statements made to local authorities about the property value of one of Trump’s golf clubs. The Fulton County, Georgia, prosecutor’s investigation into possible Trump efforts to manipulate the state’s presidential election results also stays in progress, although there have been relatively few report indicating the progress of the investigation.

And, of course, it remains to be seen whether and to what extent the Justice Department will open an investigation into Trump’s conduct regarding possible federal offenses resulting from his financial transactions and his attempted election interference – investigations that , on the background, should have already been open taking into account information available to the public. It is possible that Attorney General Merrick Garland has already approved such an investigation at some point without it being made public, or that he may do so if newly discovered facts ultimately warrant it during the investigation of the US Capitol riot on January 6. the scenario seems improbable given President Biden’s and Clean garland apparent concerns about the politically conflicting consequences of a federal inquiry into Trump’s conduct, as well as Garland’s obvious aspiration – Nevertheless unlikely in reality – to be a historical and unifying figure of bipartite national appeal. A Justice Department investigation would likely be even more publicly controversial now than it would have been when Garland took office eight months ago, and that could become more and more controversial over time, particularly if Trump announces his candidacy for 2024.

All of this suggests, for better or worse, that Bragg is now poised to become one of the most closely watched and consistent criminal prosecutors in the country.